


The Dead Do Not Bury Themselves

by EssayOfThoughts



Series: Memento Mori [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Arson, Character Analysis, Codependency, Death, Deaths, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Murder, Telepathy, relationship analysis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-03
Updated: 2015-08-21
Packaged: 2018-04-12 20:42:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 13
Words: 25,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4494030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The dead do not bury themselves. How can they? They are dead. But all the same, they are buried, and how they are buried can tell us much. How they died. Hints, perhaps, at why they died. Hints of who buried them, and why, and how. </p><p>This is a tale of the dead, of who buried them, and why. This is a tale of the twins, and all they saw perish. Of all those graves they saw filled, of all the friends and foes and family they laid to rest.</p><p>Remember: The dead do not bury themselves.</p><p>--</p><p>This fic is another brought about by my love of the Maximoff Twins, as evidenced by my two prior fics on them, <a href="/works/3956923">The Cradle of Life</a> and <a href="/works/3985555">Like Home</a>, which I strongly recommend reading before this one. They’re unconnected, separate universes, but help explain my ideas on the twins to some degree.</p><p>Many thanks to <a href="/users/Clue1117/works">Clue1117</a> and <a href="http://indigoumbrella.tumblr.com/">Indigo Umbrella</a> for beta-ing this fic for me, and many thanks to <a href="/users/TobermorianSass/">Jojo</a> and <a href="/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/">Niamh</a> for listening to me as I ranted and wrote interminably about the twins.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Wanda and Pietro had grown up on the streets, but, when they could scrape together enough money, they liked to live in the cheap flats across from the remnants of the foster home they’d spent a few years in before the riots had really started. They’d been fifteen when a firebomb thrown through one of the windows had caused the place to be ruled unsafe and the children to be carted elsewhere.

Not all of those kids arrived. Wanda and Pietro decided, quickly, that such moving was not for them, and packed their few belongings into backpacks. They’d found some wrecks and ruins to spend their nights in, and when those were full they slept between the bins in the alleys. They still went to school – Wanda insisted – and they did sports to gain them access to the showers. They would arrive early every day, after scraping together enough pennies for a bun at the bakers, and spend as long as possible under the jets of hot water, to get the reek of the streets off them.

Homework was harder to do, but Wanda got a job at the café around the corner from school, and did her work in her breaks. Pietro ran deliveries for the bakers, and would occasionally snag a tough stale loaf for them, before the baker threw it out.

Everything they owned they kept in three backpacks. The blue one was Pietro’s, and held their money, two photos of their parents, and his school books. The brown one was Wanda’s, and held soap, scissors and hair ties in the front pocket, and her books in the main. The black one was stashed at the ruin of the church, and held blankets, their changes of clothes, and a few sets of underwear each. When they could, they would wash their clothes under the showers at school, or Wanda would pay her boss at the café to be allowed to run everything through her washing machine. In the holidays she would beg use of the woman’s shower too.

They survived, most of the time. When they turned sixteen they realised the owner of the flats across from the foster home where they had lived didn’t care about age, only money, and they’d taken to saving every tip and penny, and relied more on what Pietro could snag at the bakers, or steal from street stalls and school. They’d managed to pay ahead for a whole month, and it had been beautiful.

The flat was small (two bedrooms the size of closets, one bathroom half the size of them, a small room only a few yards wide that was half-kitchen, half-seating space), but it meant that Pietro could steal meat and they could cook it. They’d had to beg pans from their neighbours, but the old lady on the left and the young couple on the right were indulgent and kind, respectively, and had given them freely each time. They’d managed to pay for a second month, and a third, and then lost it for the fourth. It was summer then, though, and they’d found a hot pipe that ran beside the church and squatted there.

When they’d managed to pay for the apartment again they’d found the previous occupant had left pans, and the two vowed to stash those someplace too, along with the utensils and plates they’d left behind. Pietro got a second job at that point, and ran deliveries for the butchers too. He’d stolen a bike the month before, and could now carry both loads at high speed through the city, beating every other delivery boy. Sometimes he’d bring home meat he hadn’t had to steal, if the butcher was especially pleased with his work, and they’d cook it themselves or share it with their neighbours and smile at the stability they’d managed to find.

 

* * *

 

They’d managed to pay for twelve months in a row, in the flat, when Wanda woke to the smell of smoke, the sound of alarms, and the loud crackling of fire from the floor below.

 

* * *

 

She woke, as ever, quickly. She stumbled slightly as she forced herself from bed, but she was quick to grab her jacket, slip on her shoes, and grab her bag. Every evening she and her brother packed their three bags with the essentials, and she had never been so glad of the fact before. It was the matter of moments to grab the blanket from her bed and cram it into her bag, and she crossed to the door.

Around it dark grey smoke curled, but when she pressed her hand to the door it was cool. She swung it open, grabbed the black bag from the cupboard in the kitchen, and ran to her brother’s door. Smoke was coming _out_ of this door and that terrified Wanda more than anything.

When she pushed his door open the room was full of dark smoke, curling up from between the creaking floorboards. Pietro lay curled half on his bed, and Wanda pulled his blanket off him and shoved it in his bag before shaking him.

“Pietro, Pietro, there’s a fire, wake up, please, _please Pietro, **Pietro!** ”_

The final shout wakes him, and, though groggy, he takes his coat, his bag, and slips on his shoes. He is coughing, his eyes watering, but he follows close behind her as they dash to the door, down the hall, and out the fire escape. At the bottom the other families are staring up at the blaze with mingled expressions of horror and fear and shock. Wanda reaches down to clasp her brother’s hand.

“Pietro, who…?” she looks up at him, questioning, and Pietro shrugs.

“I don’t know. Kostov? They’ve been having trouble with the new laws. Yasha’s gang made comments about burning the other week, or—”

Pietro is cut off by Wanda’s hand clenching in his.

“It was _them_.” She is glaring at a group of men at the end of the street. They are laughing, pointing, and one of them is fidgeting over and over with a lighter, a huge, self-satisfied grin on his face. Wanda is muttering curses under her breath, in Sokovian, German, English, Russian, all the languages she’s picked up from school and the streets. Pietro feels the urge to smile at a few of the epithets she creates for the arsonists, but stops himself, and instead wraps an arm around her. Almost instinctively Wanda leans into him, tears on her cheeks, anger in her eyes, and lets her brother comfort her.

Pietro watches warily as the group advances.

“Pretty fire, isn’t it!” one of them calls, taunting, and Wanda’s hand in his clenches tighter. Around them their neighbours look shocked, then uncomfortable, then angry. “You like it?” calls another.

The muttering among the crowd grows from concerned to angry, and Wanda’s fists clench. “They did this,” she murmurs to Pietro, under her breath. He nods, but neither of them moves.

“Where you gonna go?” shouts another, “You’re as homeless as everyone else now!” The man spits, and it hits the fur of one of Old Masha’s cats. Masha herself is nowhere to be seen. Looking around Wanda realises there are many not to be seen. _Dead_ , she realises. Devoured by the flames. She remembers how much smoke was in Pietro’s room, how sickening his coughing was, and something turns in her chest. Blood drips from her hand, where her nails have cut into her palm, and her expression changes as the full realisation of how close she came to losing her brother does something unearthly to Wanda.

“I will kill them,” she says, and it sounds as vicious as a snarl. “I will kill them _all_.”

Pietro says nothing, just rubs her shoulder slightly.

“They killed Masha, and the two boys from the ground floor, and the couple from the top floor, and the lady who would let us use her machine when ours broke and—”

Pietro says nothing, and adjusts his bag, on his shoulder. Wanda sobs, and continues listing people, “They _killed_ them, Pietro. All of them, and not even giving them a chance to _fight_. I swear to _God_ I will kill them all.”

Pietro’s hand is gentle in hers. “Alright. But only if I can help.”

The change from Pietro’s passivity to this makes Wanda smile, and they move to leave the crowd. Old Masha’s cat winds around their ankles and Pietro picks the creature up with his free hand. They are moving towards the arsonists and Wanda’s hand spasms in his.

“If you recognise them,” she whispers, “You will tell me?”

Pietro’s voice is barely audible but Wanda hears the words hidden in an exhaled breath, “Of course.”

 

* * *

 

 

They make their way past the men, and on to the church. On the way Pietro passes Wanda Old Masha’s cat and slips into the corner shop. He pilfers some fruit, and buys a small bottle of milk for the cat. On the way out he asks if they have any pastries going off, and is given a mostly stale _pain au chocolat_ for his trouble. Outside he passes it to Wanda, who inhales the scent of chocolate like it is the most perfect perfume, before devouring the pastry. The cat winds around their ankles, and Pietro scoops it up after putting the milk and fruit in his bag. He nestles the fruit – two apples, one tangerine – in between his pencil case and his spare hoodie, so they don’t bruise, and the twins continue on to the church.

 

* * *

 

_It is a note to be made here that no one else ever used the church. It was ruined, but it was still considered consecrated ground, for all it had not been that for long years. The other people who lived on the streets had long claimed they heard odd noises from within it, but after much exploring Wanda and Pietro decided it was just the creaking door and timbers, and the howling winter wind they could hear. Wanda set up a few tricks and traps, when they had decided to claim the space, and the new noises - of clanking like chains, (from Wanda’s strings of cans and washers,) and an odd scratching (from the odd mock-sandpaper) - kept people away. The twins' eerie closeness, and the odd noises from Wanda’s creations, led to the street kids calling her the Church Witch._

_(They didn’t have a name for Pietro.)_

 

* * *

 

At the church they place their blankets by the warm pipe. From the black backpack Wanda pulls one of the small dishes they’d decided to stash, and Pietro fills it with milk. Mollified, the cat that had been starting to mew settles to drink, and the twins curl alongside the pipe, their heads touching, their hands clasped. When the cat is finished it curls in the space made by their touching scalps and clasped hands, and shares warmth with them.

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a fairly long fic (12 chapters, an epilogue, completely done, and there's looking to be two sequels at least at present), so rather than posting this all at once, it will be staggered, posting every couple of days. 
> 
> As ever comments, kudos and crit are welcome, so please feel able to comment! At present the fic isn't going especially fast, but it does build up, fairly rapidly.


	2. Chapter 2

Morning is painful. They had been so long used to beds that to sleep on the hard floor of the church is uncomfortable, but they stretch and uncurl, and with quick fingers and a sharp knife Wanda peels the tangerine and cuts up the apples. Pietro pours some more milk for the cat, and once they have eaten they pack up their things. The black backpack is stashed, and at the doors of the church Wanda goes one way and Pietro the other, into town.

Before they leave they clasp their hands together in a promise.

 

* * *

 

Work is harder now, without true, good rest. Old Masha’s cat follows Wanda to the café, where it winds around the ankles of the patrons, and gets given a great deal of affection. At noon it curls up between the small bushes in the flower pots, and purrs. Wanda gets many tips that day, when the patrons find out the cat is hers, but she is stiff and exhausted, and does not smile as much as usual. When her boss asks after her brother, or a patron mentions the news of the flat burning, Wanda’s face twists. It takes her twelve breaths to calm down.

 

* * *

 

At the other end of the long street Pietro runs his deliveries. One after another, swinging around corners, slipping down streets, he races the other delivery boys, pushing aching muscles to more, to beat them. He is the first back to the butchers and the bakers, with all the receipts of delivery, and collects his bonus gladly. He has fifteen minutes before he is asked to do another delivery, and sits by the bins, making notes of who burned down their home.

The list is only missing two names, and two sketches. When he is done, the faces of the other three arsonists stare up at him belligerently from the page.

 

* * *

 

Wanda finds a lighter left by one of the patrons, when the time comes to close up. She wipes down the table with the lighter cradled in her hand, and slips it into her pocket when she tucks the cloth into her apron pocket. Her boss permits her ten minutes to clean up the kitchen and make some sandwiches, and Wanda thanks the lady profusely. Times have been getting harder, for all of them in Sokovia, and those few who can offer help grow fewer each day.

By the time Wanda leaves the café, and her boss locks the door, Pietro is waiting by a bollard. His backpack is slung over one shoulder, a notepad in his hand, pencil scribbling over the page. Wanda smiles at her brother, and lets his arm loop around her shoulder as she passes him one of the sandwiches she made. His smile at the food lifts her heart, and they make their slow way back to the church.

Before they reach it, they pause, sit on a bench by some lights, and eat the sandwiches, and the small bags of dried fruit Wanda found. Finished, Wanda starts playing with the lighter she kept, and Pietro shows her his notepad.

“I recognised a few of them,” he says. His voice is soft, gentle, like speaking to a startled cat, and his shoulder is warm against Wanda’s. Wanda remembers when they last got into a fight, and how, with her brother beside her, she felt no fear and her anger was free. She tucks closer, and looks over the three faces, and the names beside them. “They’re not Yasha’s lot, nor Kostov’s. They’re someone else’s, we knew them when we were younger; they used to try to kick us from our places. I still need to sketch the other two, but likely they’ll be with the others. One of the delivery boys said they like to hang around in the burnt out house on the other side of town.”

Wanda nods, and flicks the lighter; on and off, on and off. The warmth is pleasant on her thumb, and the flames dance prettily, reflected in the puddles. After a moment Pietro places his hand on Wanda’s. Her hand stills.

“We should go, back to the church. Maya will be waiting.”

Wanda’s raised eyebrow is a question in itself and Pietro smiles, “The cat. Masha would tell me about all her cats when I helped her bring her shopping in. That one is Maya.”

Wanda slips the lighter back into her pocket, and takes her brother’s hand. Together they stand, together they walk back. The cat meows, and winds around their feet, and Pietro drops some almost-green bacon into the dish, and covers it with milk. The cat devours it, and when it is finished and Wanda softly calls, “Maya?” to it, the cat pads over, and settles in her lap.

They sit together, for a while. Talk awhile. Wanda’s mind is calm, for the most part, though deep beneath the smooth surface of her mind a maelstrom begins, and a tempest starts. Deep plates of anger, shoved by injustice, are moving, and she knows that, in a few days, her tidal wave of flame will be free.

 

* * *

 

When the time comes for them to return to school neither of them are much pleased. They’ve become accustomed to sleeping in the church again, and make it to school and the showers having wolfed down sausage rolls pilfered from the baker’s stack of singed pastries. They scrub the scents of the streets from their bodies, and Wanda dries her hair under the hand-dryer in the bathroom, as Pietro checks all their books are there, running between the bench outside the changing rooms and their lockers. Wanda keeps the door kicked open with a foot, and watches the bags while he is gone, combing her fingers through her hair.

They have all bar one of their classes together, and at the end of Geography Wanda is waiting outside of Pietro’s classroom, her arms folded, her book bag almost empty, and an expression of impatience on her face. Pietro doesn’t need to hear the word she murmurs to nod.

“Tonight.”

 

* * *

 

The burnt out house is eerie. The street is mostly empty – a few broken windowed homes, a few abandoned shops, a few alleys filled with rubbish and waste. But the house…

Firelight fills it, from bins filled with leaping flames, and laughter echoes out of it, almost as eerie as Wanda’s creations at the church. The twins have long been used to such things, and step closer. The laughter and sounds of fire hide their approach.

It does not take much for Wanda to peek in a window and spot the five men. They are there, all of them, with two bottles of vodka, one of some other liquor, a pack of cigarettes, and some well-thumbed magazines. Wanda nods to Pietro, and they gather what flammable material they can. Pietro shifts a stack of wooden crates in front of the door, and Wanda fills it with newspaper, with paper bags, magazines and butcher paper, and strips torn from a cardboard box. Pietro finds the other door, and repeats the pattern there, building a tower of crates ready to catch fire.

Wanda looks at the house, before flicking the lighter on. The beams over the windows are enough to hold them back she thinks, and the alcohol they have will make the flames burn more. The accumulated rubbish has been linked by a chain of string, paper, cardboard, and petrol Pietro stole from the moped of one of the other delivery boys. Wanda flicks the lighter, and lights the pile at the front door. The flames leap, and catch, and Pietro takes the lighter before she burns her hand, and tugs her back from the glowing blaze. In a few moments more the back door is alight, and the house is wreathed in flames.

The hardness in Wanda’s eyes softens as she hears the men begin to scream, and she leans into Pietro. His arm loops about her shoulder, as they watch from across the street leaning against a street light. They are far enough from the city centre that the fire people won’t come. That the police won’t be called, at least until morning. They stand and watch, and Pietro kisses Wanda’s hair as she smiles at the flames of scarlet and gold.

 

* * *

 

The next day it is in the news. People are muttering about it at school, and at lunch it is revealed that two of them were boys from their school. Wanda and Pietro do not react, just murmur the same sad noises as everyone else, and head to the husk of the building after school.

The bodies have been hauled out, charcoal and crisp, fingers broken off, curled into impossibly painful positions as the heat warped their bodies. There is a brutal pleasure in Wanda’s expression as she looks at them, beside the ambulance, as the complacent police and medics ignore the bodies.

“I am glad they’re dead.”

Pietro knows this already, but to hear Wanda say it calms him. He presses a kiss to her hair.

“As am I.”

 

* * *

 

They do not move for a while. There are still smoking embers in the house they burned, glowing even now because the fire people were never called. Once the blaze began and the fire had burnt out the arsonists’ voices, the bums and tramps and street kids and homeless all, had begun to gather. A huge blaze meant lots of warmth, and for all the bickering that would ensue, they wanted the warmth and fed it.

Eventually the bodies are taken away. Zipped up into bags, and taken elsewhere. Some official comes with a pretty story about schoolchildren, and the media take photos and ask questions, and behind the man parents cry for the cameras. Wanda makes note of one thing, when the man announces the funeral. Notepad in hand she jots down the time and date and address, and tucks it away.

“You want to go?” Pietro asks, and Wanda nods.

“We kill them, we bury them. Then we go on.” Her voice is a murmur, barely audible, but Pietro’s eyes still dart around, and his arm wraps closer around his sister’s shoulder. There is a slight flex of Wanda’s shoulders as she huffs a laugh. “They can’t hear us Pietro.”

“I still don’t want them taking you.”

“They’d take both of us.” Wanda’s voice is a firm reminder, and her body is warm beside her brother’s.

Pietro presses his face into his sister’s hair and breathes deep. There is the scent of coffee from the café she works at, of the soap in the school bathrooms, and, when he breathes deepest of all, there is the scent of woodsmoke and paper-smoke and petrol-smoke from the house-burning. It smells of death, and darkness, wrapped up with the lone clean smell of school, and Pietro is reminded that his sister is just as fierce as he.

 

* * *

 

Their walk home to the church is slow. They meander the route, go down different roads. Partway back they pause by a bin-fire, warm their hands with others of the streets, and hear their stories. A few have theories about the house burning, and Wanda’s lips thin slightly when they get too close to the truth.

“We all knew they burned down them flats,” says one man. He is missing two teeth, one above, one below, giving his mouth the look of a chessboard. “I think they got killed in payback. People don’t like ‘aving their homes taken, and it ent like there’s many round ri’now is there?”

Pietro speaks, in place of Wanda. Turning his hands over the flames for warmth, his voice is calmer than Wanda knew hers would be. “Yeah, but kill someone? Or five someones? They’re arseholes but who’s gonna do that to them? _We_ were in those flats awhile. Those people? Not likely to kill people. Even arseholes.”

The gaptoothed man shrugs. “Coulda been family? Old Masha Markov died in th’fire, din’t she? Her grandson doesn’ ‘ave the best temper.”

Wanda relaxes slightly, the shakes in her hands fading, and conversation at the fire moves on. Talking about the taxes, about the shelters that are cropping up ( _“at last”_ says one woman), about the increase in arson attacks. People come by, and people pass on, and the streets are darkening when Wanda and Pietro turn from the flames, and gather themselves up.

Before they leave they pass another heading in. He is too polished to be of the streets; military trousers, clean jacket, prim little glasses; a collection of opposites making him stand out to them as clearly as the sheen of his bald head. When he reaches the fire he starts handing out sandwiches and Wanda and Pietro glance to each other.

“Who is he?” Wanda’s voice is quiet, her eyes looking almost red in the light from the fire.

Pietro shrugs. “I don’t know him.”

They turn back, and join gaptooth around the fire. Sandwiches are passed to them, and Wanda peels hers open and sniffs. Tuna mayo, yellow marks of sweetcorn, and decent bread. Wanda eyes the man, and Pietro holds his sandwich in waiting hands, even as gaptooth and the others tear into theirs. As the others eat the bald man starts to talk.

It starts like a story, the tale he tells, of something great cut low, of something mighty fallen, and its climb to regain all it lost. It sounds, to Wanda and Pietro, like propaganda, and they listen carefully to see if they may learn for whom.

When the story is done, it is not clear. Pietro finally takes a bite of his sandwich, and the man starts talking anew. Not a story, this time, but something else. An offer.

“We know that the world is changing.” His voice is soft, like Wanda’s when she is so deep in fury that a whisper is the only way to hold back the anger. “The world is changing, and America holds the changes and the secrets of them.” Wanda rolls her eyes, and unwraps her sandwich again. “America has Iron Man already, and that green monster, the abomination of science. Long ago they had the Captain, their science experiment, and now there are spies everywhere. They don’t just listen to their own people’s whispers, they listen to ours too. They wait, ready, to leap in and strike.” Wanda tears off a corner of the sandwich, tastes it slowly, and examines its parts. She does not find anything out of the ordinary, and swallows. The man talks on.

“We should have secrets _too_.” His voice is suddenly impassioned. Still soft, still quiet, but his hand is in a fist over the flames, and his eyes, behind his glasses, are alight. “We should have might _too_. Why should America have all these things? They crushed the people there before them, and they crush their people now. But we have been crushed, by Russia, by America, by so many others. And we _endured_.”

Gaptooth and the others are nodding, expressions gone from satisfied by food, to almost eager. Wanda’s hand finds her brother’s sleeve, and, with it, Pietro’s attention. Her glance to him says what words cannot, and he wraps up his sandwich, and tucks it away. His arm loops around her shoulder, and she leans into him, as the man talks on.

“We can be better, why should we not be? Why should we not have our own armour, our own great soldiers, our own secrets?” In the man’s passion his accent slips, and Wanda hears a hint of German, and with it a touch of American English. The tap of Pietro’s hand on her shoulder tells her he has heard it too, and after the next bite of her sandwich she wraps it up. She does not trust this man.

The man is speaking quieter now, but no less impassioned. He speaks like a preacher telling a secret to his congregation, and given how gaptooth and the others look at him he might as well be. Wanda feels cold, and her hands start to shiver again. “There _are_ people who want to help us. People who _want_ to make Sokovia great again. They have things, artefacts stolen from America, and from their organisation, their _S.H.I.E.L.D._. They can change us, they can make us better. They can make us the best we can be.”

Wanda and Pietro have had enough. They slip back, away from the fire, into the shadows. When Pietro looks to Wanda, the last catch of the flames is still trapped in her eyes. Its scarlet glow makes her look more like a witch than ever.

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And stuff has finally started happening! As ever comments, kudos and crit are all welcome.


	3. Chapter 3

The church is cool, when they get back, but the pipe is still warm. Maya winds around their feet, and Pietro pours out the last of the milk into the dish, and sets down the last half of his sandwich, scraping the tuna into the milk. Maya’s purrs are audible and Wanda smiles, her fingers dancing down the cat’s back.

Pietro’s voice is gentle. “When is it?”

“Hm?”

“The funeral. If we’re going--”

“Two days from now.” Wanda is quiet, and her fingers tangle around Maya’s tail. “St. Methodius’ Church Graveyard, 11am. Private church service, public burial, for them all. We just have to be there early. What about the man at the fire?”

Pietro shrugs, plays with his shoelace. “I’ll ask around. Andrej said there was someone telling stories at the fires last month, maybe it’s the same man?”

Wanda nods, and Pietro pulls out blankets. Hidden all day in the black backpack, tucked by the warm pipe, they are cosy, and when they bed down alongside the metal and link their fingers together, the chill from the stories the man had told finally recedes.

 

* * *

 

Pietro is up long before Wanda the next morning. He takes the remains of Wanda’s sandwich and peels off the tuna, dumping it into Maya’s dish, and rises. The light is soft, and clear, and he tightens his shoelaces, re-knots them, and heads out. They have an hour before they need to think of heading in to school and Pietro decides to make full use of it. He presses a kiss to Wanda’s forehead, strokes his hand down Maya’s back, and heads out of the church.

There are not many people out and about this early, but he knows the bakers will be waking up, and that he could pilfer the first of the inevitably singed buns. He knows, too, that the grocer’s down the street from there will have the apples Wanda loves, and that the corner shops will be waking. He snags some loose change from one man’s pocket as he passes, and counts it carefully in his hand. It is enough, just, to buy a bar of chocolate and some milk, and he pops into a corner shop to do so. When he reaches the baker’s it is easy enough to take two singed rolls, and slip them into the bag, and simpler still to do the same at the grocer’s. He leaves the last of the change he has by the till at the grocer’s, though, and hopes it is enough to apologise for taking the fruit.

He picks a few other pockets, going down the street, and takes a few more handfuls of loose change and a half full carton of cigarettes. Before returning to the church he turns down one alley, and kicks a bin decisively.

The man who comes stumbling out from behind it would be more accurately described as a _boy_. Small, pale, lank hair around his face, and an adult’s coat, too large for his frame, dwarfing him.

“Andrej.”

“Maximoff.”

Pietro takes the cigarettes from his pocket, and the boy’s eyes light up. “The man, the one from a few months back, telling stories at the street fires. What do you know?”

Andrej bites his lip, and Pietro moves the carton back and forth. The boys pale eyes follow it, and his mouth slips. “Different street now. He wants people for something. Sometimes other people come. Nikolai vanished a few months back, and Lyudmila. Cyril said he had a job somewhere after talking to him, hasn’t been seen since.” His eyes stay locked on the cigarettes, but he still asks, “Why?”

“He was handing out sandwiches over on Brutvelts Street. Trying to round up something patriotic, but he sounds German. Maybe even American.”

“Sandwiches?” The raised eyebrow and shrewd gaze is too sharp for a child.

Pietro nods. “Sandwiches. Tuna, mayo, sweetcorn. Told stories while gaptooth &co ate. I think he wants them for something.”

“You mean the Church Witch thinks he wants them for something.”

Pietro’s hand shoots into his pocket, and the cigarettes are gone from sight. “I mean _I_ think he wants them for something.”

Andrej grumbles something that sounds like it could be an apology, and holds out a hand. Two cigarettes are dropped into it, and Andrej’s fingers twitch, almost in question. Pietro drops two more.

“You hear more about him, you tell me, alright?” A sharp exhale, a doubtful look, twitched fingers. Pietro drops two more cigarettes into Andrej’s hand. “You tell me, alright?”

Andrej drops five of the white sticks into his pockets, and pulls out a lighter from another. The ease with which he lights the cigarette, and with which he inhales, is almost wrong, given how young he looks, but with it he relaxes. “I’ll tell you.”

Pietro’s smile is almost a smirk, except it is also almost fond. “Take care Andrej. Don’t want you to cough up your lungs yet.”

Andrej’s smile _is_ a smirk. “I won’t. Take care too. Need someone easy to fleece cigs off’ve.” Pietro is almost at the end of the alley when Andrej speaks again. “Take care of your sister too. Unrest is getting worse, and you know what happens to witches then.” Pietro’s glare is dangerous, but Andrej continues all the same. “We _burn_.”

 

* * *

 

School is peaceful, over the next few days. Friends of the arsonists get attention constantly, weeping in corners and in public, and Wanda rolls her eyes at the drama. Occasionally her hand reaches for the lighter, flick-flick-flicking it, and after the third time Pietro steals it from her pocket and replaces it with a stress ball he took from their maths teacher. Wanda’s fingers play over it, massaging it when she gets worried, and the frown-lines on her brow ease.

When the time comes for them to go to the funeral they have made the necessary arrangements. Wanda has begged time from the café, and Pietro does his deliveries in record time. Black hoodies are tugged from their bags, and Wanda slips off the most colourful of her jewellery. They look like oddly-sombre schoolkids, and fit in with the growing crowd at the graveyard. It is Wanda who steers them through the crowds, a distance away, onto a rise that will afford them the best view of the five neatly dug pits. At eleven the church bells toll, and the crowd turns.

The coffins are small. In the failing economy of Sokovia even the dead are suffering the cuts and the coffins look cheaply made, and are only large enough for their contents thanks to their contents being charcoal and ash.

They process slowly, weeping parents in black, a priest in his robes, and mourners behind. Words are spoken, and the coffins descend, one by one, into the ground. As the crowd disperses Pietro moves to leave. Wanda’s hand, tight on his wrist, halts his movement and he stops. Together they watch as the graves are each filled in, and two of the five are covered over with flowers.

“Now we go?”

Wanda’s voice contains a smile. “Now we go.”

 

* * *

 

As they walk back Pietro finally tells his sister what Andrej told him. He had not mentioned it, in the hope he might hear more, but, eventually, the truth will out, and Pietro would rather choose the moment than not.

“I talked to Andrej.”

“Snowsmoke?” The nickname is an apt one, invented by Wanda. Pietro never uses it, but only because Andrej only accepts it from Wanda. For the boy as pale as snow, ever circled by smoke. That Wanda still calls him that makes Pietro smile.

“Andrej. But yes.”

“What did he say?” Wanda asks, balancing along a low wall. She is higher, now, than Pietro, and the sun filters through the buildings behind her, gilding her edges, for all it is almost noon.

“The man has been there before. Three have already vanished - Nikolai, Lyudmila and Cyril. Andrej thinks the man wants them for something too.” He is quiet for a moment, and offers Wanda a hand to jump a gap filled by a pot of flowers littered with cigarette butts and an empty beer bottle. “From what I could tell from Andrej, the sandwiches are a new thing.”

“What does he want them for?”

Pietro shrugged. “Ask Nikolai. Or Lyudmila, or Cyril. I don’t know.”

Wanda clasps his hand more tightly, and jumps down from the end of the wall. They could go to work, if they chose, and gather together more money, and hope to find a new place to stay. They could go back to the church, or do their homework in the library across from the town hall. They could go down alley after alley until they find a friend to trade information with. There is a light in Wanda’s eyes, and Pietro waits for her to speak.

“Do you want to find out?”

 

* * *

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

Wanda’s plan is reckless in a way usually only Pietro’s are. Pietro refuses to let her near the man again, and so Wanda bargains. That evening the plan is made, and they head out to find gaptooth, the bin, and the man with the stories. Pietro is coiled as tight as a spring, and every shadow and scratch and gust of wind makes him want to pick up Wanda and run back to the church.

Wanda is good at steering conversation, that he knows. He knows, too, that when Wanda wishes to distract someone, make someone pay ill-attention to topics, she can make them spill their every secret. He also knows that people have gone missing, and the idea of losing his twin fills him with the deepest dread.

They find the man, at the bin-fire, handing out sandwiches. They are cheese, onion and egg this time, on brown bread, and still warm, and gaptooth &co are tearing into theirs with abandon. The man waves Wanda and Pietro closer, and passes them sandwiches, widening the circle for them. He puts an empty cardboard box into the bin, to make the fire flare, and starts talking again. Wanda slowly picks apart her sandwich, eating it crumb by crumb. Pietro watches, silently, and barely listens. His eyes are fixed on the man with a wariness only Wanda can see, and that to all others would look like a threat. Finally the man finishes his story, and moves to his speech.

“S.H.I.E.L.D. can’t be trusted. You know they keep secrets - does anyone really know anything about any of them?” The man’s voice is reasonable, and gaptooth &co nod. Wanda tilts her head, and speaks.

“But can our government be trusted? They keep secrets - not always well, we all know they don’t give a shit for us - but they keep secrets too.”

The man’s eyes light up at the engagement. “No current government, or body of authority, can be trusted, unless they have complete transparency. Does S.H.I.E.L.D. have that transparency? Does the White House? Even Sokovia has learned from their presence on the world stage, and turned secretive.”

Wanda scoffs, “All governments keep secrets though. Sometimes necessary ones - how many more wars would we have been embroiled in if they hadn’t hidden information as they did?”

Gaptooth &co pause. The man frowns, at the challenge, but answers. “Sometimes secrets _are_ necessary,” he admits. “But S.H.I.E.L.D. claims to work for the good of mankind - why can’t they be open with us? Do they distrust us, the ones they claim to protect?” Wanda’s gaze grew more challenging, and the man’s accent slipped showing just a hint of German as he continued. “If so, why do they fight for us?”

The man was not expecting the laugh that Wanda gave, and it showed on his face. “Maybe they _want_ to believe that humans are good, but do not entirely. Maybe they think that if they protect us from… what is the phrase…” she slips into German, the first language she heard the phrase in, “ _the big bad wolf_ then we will become better, become people to whom they _can_ be honest.”

Pietro knows Wanda believes none of this, but it is still eerie to hear her say it. Her tone is perfect, her posture challenging, her eyes alight with the flames of the fire. When the man realises her perfect German he almost flinches. Casually, Wanda plucks another piece of her sandwich free, and pops it into her mouth. The apparent ease of her body is palpable, and Pietro shifts from foot to foot. He starts when the man twists out a laugh.

“You honestly think that? Are you naive? They won’t ever tell us the truth. Why would they? Secrets are power.”

Wanda picks another fragment of sandwich free, and rolls it in her fingers. “Maybe. But you’ve kept secrets too. Why do you give us sandwiches? Tell us these stories? Why should we trust you, but not they?”

Across the fire gaptooth &co have stopped eating. A few mouths hang open, half chewed food visible behind what teeth remain. Under Wanda’s sharp, fire-lit gaze the man straightens. Wanda pops the fragment of sandwich into her mouth, and the only sound in the alley is the crackling of the fire, and the barks of a dog two streets away.

“Well?” Wanda asks. “Are you S.H.I.E.L.D., probing for dissatisfaction? Some agent from America or England, or China or _Germany_ , seeking to see what we think here? Are you going to tell us the truth? Or are you as bad as those you… what is the word…”

“Damn.” Pietro’s voice is quiet, but clear as he continues. “Condemn. Castigate.” Wanda smiles.

“Castigate.” She rolls the word around her mouth like wine, and turns her gaze fully back to the man, startled, almost shaking, but still standing straight. The firelight dancing in her eyes turns them scarlet, and she looks like a demon. “Well?”

The man is quiet, and after a moment gaptooth waves a hand, “Hey! Don’t cast-ti-gate him back, ‘ey? He gives us sammiches.”

“No.” The man’s voice is certain. “No, she is right. Secrets have been kept, and they should not. I will tell you all.” From Wanda’s stance Pietro knows she can almost see the man’s mind spinning, twisting his story into something that paints him again in a good light. He knows his twin is holding back a smile, as the man tells them all they wanted to know.

 

* * *

 

It is not until they are back at the church that Wanda asks Pietro what he knows she has been wondering.

“Should we go to them, you think? They fight S.H.I.E.L.D. and so they must fight the Avengers, this could allow us to--,”

“You would have us sell our souls to them?” Pietro’s question cuts deeper than he meant, and Wanda’s face falls. He rolls upright, from where he was lying on blankets, and hugs his sister. “I’m sorry.”

Against his shoulder she shakes her head, “No. You’re right. We would not stay as we are with them. They would promise and promise and promise and never give. They would tear us apart, and tear us from our vengeance. You’re right.”

Pietro’s hand smooths down his sister’s back, and he pulls a blanket around her shoulders. “Maybe,” he murmurs, “If we are ever desperate, we can turn to them. But I do not think we are desperate yet.”

 

* * *

 

The next morning Pietro is sure to get some chocolate when he steals fruit and pinches buns for them, and leaves it, with a simple Cyrillic note, by Wanda’s hand when he goes off to work.

_I’m sorry for being cruel. I love you, sister._

 

* * *

 

The days went slowly. Summer built, making warmer the city, and bringing closer the holidays. They had no place to wash themselves, or their clothes, when the summer holidays came, and Wanda asked her boss if they could use her shower and washer again, rather than using the school showers as they usually did. Water was becoming tighter in Novi Grad, even with the river flowing through, but the woman permitted it.

“Besides,” Katalina said, “This way you are presentable, hm?”

 

* * *

 

It is when she is at work that Wanda hears of the intervention of S.H.I.E.L.D. _in_ Sokovia. The crowds are already gathering, people rushing by, paying quickly for a sandwich and a hot drink before rushing to the square. Wanda cannot leave the café, but Pietro comes by, deliveries done, and tells her what he has heard.

“They arrested someone. Sokovian, not S.H.I.E.L.D., something else,” Pietro says. “I think they called him HYDRA.”

Wanda blinks, and turns to look toward the square. The only people still at the cafe are old man Piotyr, his grandniece Aleksa and two teens, tapping boredly on their phones. She cleared the tables as the crowds rushed by and behind the counter Katalina is watching the street to the square with wide eyes. From the street shouts come, and Pietro eyes it.

“I’m going to see what is happening,” Pietro says. “We need to know if the streets are safe tonight.”

Wanda rests her arm over the tray she carries against her body and nods. She stretches to tip-toes and presses a kiss to his cheek. “Be quick,” she murmurs. “Be safe.”

Pietro nods, and is gone. She watches his form dodge through the crowds as long as she can, before Katalina calls her in to help wash up. When Pietro returns she lets out a deeper breath than she realised she’d been holding.

 

* * *

 

When they get back to the church Wanda waits for Pietro to fall asleep, Maya curled by his shoulder, before she rises and slips out. She ties the tripwires and noise-chains behind her with extra care, using the weak light of distant streetlights and the few flames of lit bins outside the church to guide her movements. Memory serves her well, and before long she is dodging down the streets toward Snowsmoke’s bin. In her pocket are two cigarettes she’d begged from Old Man Piotyr.

Andrej is leaning by the wall, rather than hiding under the bin bags he’d filled with paper long ago to act as insulation. The bins in this street are often ignored, and his collection of insulation and his tattered cardboard hut have lasted many months, nestled between the larger bins.

Wanda holds out the two cigarettes from her pocket, and Andrej brings out his lighter. Together they crouch by the bins, and smoke.

“How bad is it likely to get?” It is Andrej who asks, not Wanda, and she shrugs.

“I don’t know. Pietro is worried the streets are going to get unsafe.” She exhales a spiralling cloud of smoke, and sucks on the cigarette again. Andrej leans into her side.

“I warned your brother the other day.”

Wanda’s brows rise. “Oh?”

“The streets are getting upset. So are the people. We all know what happens to witches when that happens.”

Wanda’s hand is light on the boys hair, stroking through grimy tangles. Her voice is a whisper. “We burn.”

Against her shoulder Andrej nods. “If you don’t, something of yours will. Your bags, your brother--,” Wanda flinches. “Sorry.”

“It’s alright, Snowsmoke.” Wanda’s voice is soft. “It’s a valid threat.”

Andrej sucks on his cigarette, and exhales a perfect ring of smoke. Wanda smiles slightly. “I don’t want either of you to burn. There’s no one so easy to get cigs and food off than you two.”

The corner of Wanda’s mouth rises higher. “Helps you knew us at the foster home.”

Andrej’s head shakes. “Don’t remember the foster-place much. Just streets and cigarette smoke.”

“And us?”

Andrej nods. “And you and your brother.”

They smoke slowly, savouring their cigarettes. Occasionally Wanda’s hand strokes over Andrej’s hair, and the boy nestles closer to her. Wanda moves bin bags of insulation closer, and tucks them around him.

“Will you tell us,” Wanda asks, pausing to suck in a breath through the cigarette, “If something happens; news of the person telling stories, news of riots or protests, will you tell us? I can’t promise cigs, or food, Snowsmoke, but will you tell us?”

Andrej is dozing now, but alert, and nods against her shoulder.

“Thank you.” Wanda’s voice is a breath, and she tilts her head, almost like a kiss, to Andrej’s hair. Together they stub out their cigarettes, and Wanda stays sat by Andrej. It is not long before he sleeps, and Wanda moves away carefully, setting Andrej’s head down on a roll of rags, and moving the bin bags around him, quietly as she can, to act as insulation. She could not feel his ribs this time, which is something, but she still remembers the winter where Pietro wondered if Andrej would lose his fingers.

She passes silently through the streets, and back to the church. Maya stirs, briefly, when Wanda returns smelling of smoke, but simply purrs at her presence, and watches her with yellow eyes as she beds down again. Wanda knows Pietro will smell the cigarette on her come the morning, but does not care. They have each smelled of worse things. She presses her nose to her brother’s shoulder, and closes her eyes to sleep.

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, two chapters tonight. As ever comments, crit and kudos are all welcome.


	5. Chapter 5

Over the summer the protests grow. Over winter they calm again, mostly because no one wants to stand in the square freezing their fingers off while they wave signs and repeat chants, but come spring they are back. During this Wanda takes to, once a week, begging cigs from Old Man Piotyr, and sitting with Andrej. They share their cigarettes, and Andrej nestles against her side, and tells her what he has heard. Wanda knows that to her brother Andrej is mocking or belligerent, sarcastic or shrewd, but to her he softens at her nickname for him, at the murmured word of _Snowsmoke_ , and responds to her as she did to Pietro: trust and relaxation.

Snowsmoke was old in a young body, and to some on the streets that was enough to be called witch. Wanda remembered always that Snowsmoke had no one so constant as Pietro to act as shield, for all she was his equivalent. One evening she brought her clanking chains, and left them beside Andrej when he eventually slept. The next week they were hung, carefully, and there were no scuffed bootprints by Andrej’s bin.

 

* * *

 

Pietro never questions Wanda’s closer interest in Andrej, but leaves the cartons of cigarettes he pinches in easier places for Wanda take two when she goes to see the boy. They both work harder, and a few nights, when the grumblings of the people were louder, they skirt the church and beg a place in one of the shelters for the night.

They still return to the church. It is their safe place, their certain place, and Maya stays there, having eventually made her own rag bed by the pipe, between the spaces Wanda and Pietro claim as theirs. Since Maya has been there with them, the number of times they have been woken by an odd squeaking, or a rat scrabbling by has dropped, and Maya looks well-fed without them needing to give her milk or meat. With summer building she sprawls out of her nest, rubbing her face and feet against Wanda and Pietro, oblivious to the growing unrest in Novi Grad, in all of Sokovia.

 

* * *

 

The first time they go to a protest, it is by accident. They were trying to get to the bakers to spend their few pennies on a decent sized meat and veg pastry they could share, and the crowd had swept them up. Pietro had immediately grabbed for Wanda’s wrist but she had already found the flow of the crowd, and rode it to the front. Pietro could push his way through crowds with greater ease than many, but Wanda found the flow of it, and followed it like a river current.

It did not take long before they were at the front, and could read the signs and hear the chants with greater clarity than they could before. Pietro stood, rigid, by his twin’s side, eyes scanning for a way out.

And then Wanda joined in. Joined the chants, first uncertainly and then building to a bright crescendo. She tugged on Pietro’s sleeve, glanced up at him with eyes bright with something almost akin to hope and Pietro could do nothing but join in too.

 

* * *

 

After that first protest Pietro had guided a giddy Wanda back to the church. He was giddy too, giddy with the feeling of being something _more_ , more than just himself and Wanda, but he knew, in his heart of hearts that he was already something _more_ , already half of a whole, and he had long since charged himself to keep that other half safe. When they were back at the church they both flopped on their blankets, and stared at the tiled ceiling. Both were grinning. Pietro’s eyes were dancing, voice laughing, and Wanda’s joy came out in a lullaby, as she stroked her hand over Maya’s back, beringed fingers catching the light that came from outside.

Pietro knew, perfectly well, why people called his sister the Church Witch. She was wise, in many ways, and guided the lost children where she could, and knew the right paths. She was the one who advised jobs and sports for them both, for money and cleanliness, she had made the decisions that gave them stability, while Pietro kept them safe. He knew that she was fire and fierceness more than he was, and that was why he had to be water and air and ice to protect her.

But nights like this made him think of the old witches. Not those of wisdom and knowing, but those of freedom too, who danced naked in the woods around bonfires, free in the knowledge that they were strong enough, wise enough, fast enough, to be safe in the midst of danger. Wanda was never so beautiful to him as when she was like this, giddy on that thing so close to hope they almost felt that they might one day manage to kill Tony Stark. In moments like these he had hope that, if they together may not kill Stark, Wanda would be able to alone, and if she could not she would summon so many to her cause as to be unstoppable.

That night his dreams were of people with Wanda’s firelit eyes, riding on the winds and clouds of a storm, and swinging down to strike Stark Tower with lightning as scarlet-red as blood.

 

* * *

 

The next time they are at a protest they make their way to the front of the crowd together. Wanda had suggested this, attending this one out of choice, rather than accident, and they ride the crowd to the fore, Wanda’s hair bound back so she cannot be grabbed, Pietro close by. Wanda can feel the spirit of the people, their anger, their anguish, their righteousness, and grasps it with both hands, clasping it tight, and raising her fists to the chant.

Beside her Pietro is doing the same; he cannot feel the spirit but he has always known when and how to follow her. The crowd moves and sways like a single living organism and Wanda has never felt so alive. Not when they were struggling for breath, buried beneath rubble, not when they fled the firebombed foster home, not any time on the streets or school, not even when they killed the arsonists. Her body is singing with the anger of the people of Novi Grad and she screams herself hoarse in chanting.

 

* * *

 

They are among the first to be arrested, when the police come. Wanda is clubbed down by a policeman’s baton, and sees Pietro lunging before dropping down beside her. They are cuffed, and thrown into a van, and curl into each other on the short ride to the police department. They are put in different cells with others from the protest. Pietro pushes his way to the dividing bars, and Wanda weaves her way through and they sit, brows resting on the metal, just brushing each other, and fingers touching from where they rest their hands on their knees.

Behind them the others comment and wonder, but Wanda has found her peace in her brother’s presence, and does not pay them mind nor care. Some people leave rapidly, others remain, and there are around fifteen people in all, when the man from the fire-bins comes by.

Wanda sees how his eyes widen, to see her and Pietro there.

 

* * *

 

He has paid the bail of all of them that need it, and vouched for the rest. That is the first thing they learn. When one asks why, asks the cost, he shakes his head and says, simply, “ _Gratis_.”

 _Free_.

Wanda trusts him even less, and listens to what he says as they each file out.

“If ever you need help, or want help, or want to be a part of something bigger, come to the old castle.”

Pietro’s wide eyes tell her that he too remembers what the man said of the organisation at the castle, the one that had stolen away Nikolai, and Lyudmila, and Cyril. They listen. They take the business cards he presses to their hands, and they flee back to the church.

It is summer, and the air is warm, the stones still heated from the sun, and Wanda is shivering so hard that when she curls into Pietro’s arms he fears he will end up shaking with her force.

 

* * *

 

“Do you think we should consider it?”

Pietro’s voice is small, and Wanda looks over to him, startled. Her hands play over Maya’s fur, the cat twisting into the touch.

“Pietro, you said--,”

“I know what I said. I was cruel. Do you think we should consider it?”

Wanda shrugs, and is silent. Pietro stretches a hand to Maya, and his fingers ghost by Wanda’s where they both pet the cat.

“Are you sure this isn’t because he got everyone out? You know he could be doing that precisely so you think this way.”

Pietro nods. “I know. I know he told us the truth - for a given measure of truth - because you tricked him into it. I just … How else are we ever going to get Stark?”

Wanda’s eyes close. Her hands stroke down Maya’s back, and gently weave around the cat’s flicking tail. Under her lids her eyes are darting back and forth, calling up memories and thoughts and ideas. When they open her gaze is certain, fixed on a single shining spot on the pipe.

“I think we should think on it more, before we decide.”

 

* * *

 

The city grows in unrest, but Wanda and Pietro do not go to more protests. Some days Wanda misses it, the feeling of the pulsing heart and spirit of Novi Grad, and how it drives through her and makes her feel alive in a way that nothing else has before. Other days Wanda notices Pietro’s eyes drifting toward the castle on the outskirts, and is glad they avoid them.

When they go to the bins they avoid the man with the sandwiches, for all it means easier food, but skim by afterward, and ask what was talked of. Neither like it, that he is slowly convincing them, or the hints of rebellion they see growing in their eyes. Wanda takes to guessing the days that there will be riots, and it worries Pietro, both how often they are, and how often Wanda is right.

 

* * *

 

“Tell me why you think we should go to them.”

Wanda’s voice is quiet, but certain, as she asks her brother, and she listens carefully as the words tumble out.

Then she says, “Tell me why you thought we should not go to them.” and listens as even more is said.

At the end of it Pietro bows his head, lets his dark curls be parted by Wanda’s hand stroking over his scalp.

“We wait,” Wanda says. “For now we wait.”

Pietro’s only response is to bow his head further, as Wanda kisses the shell of his ear.

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As ever comments and crit are welcome!


	6. Chapter 6

Summer climbs around them. The sun warms the streets, and Wanda closes her eyes against the black spots in her vision when she works in the cafe. Pietro splashes through all the puddles he can find on his bicycle, counting on the water and the wind to keep him cool. In the evenings, when it grows colder, they curl a small distance away from the warm pipe, seeking the cold over the warm.

In the square and the streets and the marketplaces, displeasure and discontent grow, and Wanda slips out to check on Andrej more often. His alley is small, and unnoticed, and so is he, but still she worries. She would not want to leave the city, even for vengeance, unless she knew Snowsmoke would be safe from people who might burn him, the small boy too shrewd for his age.

In the evenings Wanda asks Pietro again, why they should go, and why they should not, and each time she asks the answers are the same. They stay in the church, and at their jobs, and at school, watching their city fall to greater ruin.

 

* * *

 

One day, when the streets have worried them both too much, they go by Snowsmoke’s alley, and find three men there. There is no sign of Andrej, but when they come back, some ten minutes later, they spot him diving under a bin.

Wanda crouches.

“Snowsmoke? It’s just us. You’re safe for now.”

Under the bin Andrej wriggles closer, and his pale, grime covered face peers out. Wanda stretches out a hand, and he accepts it, hauling himself out.

“Who were they?”

Andrej looks up to Pietro, crouched as he is by the side of the bin. Beside him Wanda can feel his ribs, even through the thick layers of his coat. He shrugs. “Witch-hunters I suppose.”

It takes no more than a glance from Wanda for Pietro to help the boy find a new place to stay.

That evening, when they return to the church, and pour water into a bowl for Maya, Pietro’s hand rubs soothing circles on Wanda’s back. For all the heat when they sleep that evening their hands are more closely interlinked than ever, and the frown line on Wanda’s brow does not ease until morning.

 

* * *

 

Maya follows closely behind Wanda on the walk to work for a few days, before resuming her usual wide prowling. Sometimes Wanda wonders why a cat would willingly stay feral with street kids, when it could easily beg a home out of someone richer, but decides that Maya is a cat, and cats do as they will. Old Man Piotyr laughs when Wanda tells him of the odd loyalty Maya shows, and his grandniece teases Maya onto her lap.

Maya sits like a princess, basking in the attention, until Piotyr and Aleksa leave.

 

* * *

 

That evening Wanda goes to sit with Andrej. He has set up his new place well, blocking entrances and exits so only he knows the truly simple ways in and out. The noise-chains Wanda gave him hang well, and chase off most people, and the careful placement of objects, appearing like looming people, chase off those bold enough to venture in.

“Had others tried to hurt you, before the witch-hunters?”

Wanda has no cigarette this time. She’d given them both to Andrej on entering his new space, and one had been squirrelled away into the pockets of his immense coat, the other immediately lit up. How much he relaxes as he sucks on it worries Wanda, but she sat beside him all the same. Andrej is quiet a while.

“A few.” His words are hidden in an exhale, and Wanda’s eyes dart from wall to floor to Snowsmoke.

“How many?”

Andrej’s eyes are wary. “Wanda...,”

His voice trails off into silence, and the clanking of the noise-chains in the wind.

“I almost lost Pietro when they burned down the flats. I don’t want to lose you too, old friend.”

Andrej huffs a laugh, “Young friend.”

Wanda’s mouth quirks into a smile. “Young friend. How many tried to hurt you?”

Andrej shrugs. “More’n five, less’n ten. I didn’t pay much attention. I just hid.”

When Wanda’s hand touches his hair, stroking through grimy strands, the boy relaxes. “Tell me their names,” she says, “tell me their faces.” Her words are barely a whisper as she continues, “I will kill them for you.”

She can see the smile on Andrej’s face, as his head tilts into her shoulder. “Maybe,” he murmurs. “If I feel that threatened.”

 

* * *

 

It is a quiet day, when they return back to the church to find Maya curled, mewling like a kitten in the doorway. Someone has burned her legs, her tail, her back. There is no fur there, and the skin is twisted and melted like plastic. She butts at their hands when they reach down to check on her, mewling still. Pietro goes and gets the dish, and the last of the milk. Wanda sits by the door, looking into the street, and cradles Maya’s head with gentle hands.

There are, just across the courtyard, two boys, and she watches them in fury when she sees one laughing with a lighter.

When Pietro returns with the dish Wanda lets Maya’s head free. The cat drinks the milk, little laps of her tongue that vanish it quickly. Wanda’s hands dance over the cat’s head, gently stroke her ears, and stop carefully short of the brutal, burned flesh of her back.

When Maya finishes the milk Pietro moves the dish, and presses a kiss to his fingertips, and his fingertips to Maya’s nose. It is Wanda’s hands that wrap quickly around the cat’s neck, and snap it.

At the sound Pietro drops immediately, pulls his sister to him, hugs her close, and lets hot tears splash onto his collar. He can feel Wanda’s sorrow in their heat, and her fury.

 

* * *

 

It is a while before Wanda’s shaking shoulders still. She turns in his arms, twists so her back is pressed against his shoulder, but lets his arms wrap around her still. She turns her gaze, red-rimmed and full of unending anger, towards the boys across the square. Pietro strokes his sister’s hair, and speaks.

“We should bury her.”

Wanda’s voice is harsh, trying to be callous. “Why bother.” Pietro can still feel the dampness of her tears on his shirt. His hand strokes over her hair with utmost gentleness, and he presses a kiss to her shoulder.

“Because,” he says, and his voice is soft, “You cared about her. You loved her, for being a cat, and nothing more. And you killed her, because you could not heal her. We should bury her.”

Pietro knows that tears are going to roll down his sister’s cheeks, long moments before they do, and he holds her in the waning sunlight as she sobs.

 

* * *

 

The space they find for Maya is small. The church may no longer be consecrated, but it was once, and Wanda decides that is enough for a cat. They prise up a paving stone, in front of the door, and Pietro carves “Maya the Cat. Loyal to a Fault.” on it in rough Cyrillic letters. Wanda scoops out dirt from the grave, and sets Maya’s corpse in it, smoothing soft soil over the rough burns of her body.

Somehow Pietro finds flowers. Chrysanthemums and peonies, and a single red-pink orchid that Wanda does not wish to know how he stole. They are settled in, alongside the cat, before Pietro sits opposite her.

“She was a good cat.”

Wanda nods, but nothing more, and Pietro tries again.

“Though she would mew at us incessantly when she wanted milk and food, she would share her warmth with us, and stayed with us, even though we were on the streets.”

Wanda looks up. “She was a good cat,” is all she says, and gently starts scooping dirt back in. Pietro joins her, without a word, and sets the paving-stone-cum-gravemarker over the top. The remaining dirt he presses into the cracks, to make sure no one lifts the stone, and no one hurts Maya again.

 

* * *

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> COMMENTS, Crit and Kudos are always welcome!


	7. Chapter 7

When Wanda tells Pietro of the other threats to Snowsmoke his eyes narrow. She knows he cares little for others. He cares for their parent’s memories, and he cares for her. On some level he cared for Maya, and enough for other people that he had helped Old Masha and learned the names of all her cats. Snowsmoke is some other entity to him, a stranger, an acquaintance, and an extension of Wanda all balled into one, more than he is an individual in his own right, but all the same Pietro cares. Snowsmoke is one Wanda seeks to protect, so Pietro will seek to protect him too.

The word is passed round rapidly that no one is to harm Andrej, and when Wanda next asks how he has been the pale boy smiles. She cannot feel his ribs when he curls against her.

 

* * *

 

The riots are getting worse, and one day Pietro comes back with a scrape on his cheek from passing through the starting storm of one. When he returns to the church he lets Wanda wash it, and murmurs to her how he saw the man with the sandwiches there, inciting the people, encouraging them to throw things with careful words. Wanda does not ask why they should and should not go to the castle anymore.

 

* * *

 

Wanda can hear the riots from the cafe, and Pietro has learned to navigate around them. Each morning they go first to where Andrej stays, a short narrow walk down two alleys and a gap between bins and shops. He knows the streets even better than they, and in his early morning efforts to thieve fresh cigarettes he learns where the crowds are gathering, where some new leader is claiming the ability to help. They steer clear of these spaces, and give Andrej what food they can in thanks. It hurts Wanda to admit that there is more, now that Maya no longer is.

 

* * *

 

Wanda thinks, long and hard, before asking if Pietro wants to go to another protest. His gaze is uncertain, his face drawn, but he nods.

“So long as I’m there with you.”

Wanda smiles. “I wouldn’t have it otherwise.”

 

* * *

 

The light is bright, the day they go to the protest. They get there early, help those starting up, claim one banner for themselves, and hold it with whoever else is willing. Wanda has already found the spirit of the growing crowd, and the smile she gives to her brother tells him with certainty that she can feel the pulsing emotions of the people of Novi Grad.

When she raises her voice in song and chant, so too does he.

 

* * *

 

The protest is just that: a protest, but all the same it is oddly peaceful for it. Maybe because there is no new self-proclaimed saviour or liberator there, it is peaceful. The people protest, they yell and scream and rage and storm and sing, but come the eve they leave, and the square returns to peacefulness. From others there the twins had managed to beg food, and they sit on a bench and eat, slowly, savouring it. When they are finished, and are dusting crumbs from their clothes, Wanda looks to Pietro. He only bows his head. No harm came to them, this time, and he will accompany Wanda to another protest, if she asks.

 

* * *

 

The next protest is bigger, louder. Come the end of it Pietro carries a half-giddy but exhausted Wanda back to the church. Wanda curls in his arms, tucks her face against his shoulder. By the time they are at the church she is asleep, and does not stir as Pietro tucks her in. Pietro takes a moment, and brushes dust and dirt from Maya’s grave marker before tucking himself in, pressing his fingertips to his sister’s hand, and closing his eyes.

 

* * *

 

Wanda has grown in confidence with the protests. Where before she was confident enough to guard herself now she is so confident as to gain notice at school, and that concerns Pietro. The number who would do them harm if they realised they lived on the streets and still went to school rises and falls depending on what new leader was in vogue, but there were always some. Pietro is more on watch than ever. When Wanda asks if he wants to go to a protest again, he only shrugs.

“If you want to, I will go too.” He would not deny her anything, if he can give it. It is how they have always been, half each of a whole, and as a whole unable to deny themselves what the other needs.

 

* * *

 

In the past, when people had tried to convince Pietro that he didn’t _need_ to do things because Wanda asked him, he would shrug. “She is my sister,” he would say. “Why would I refuse to help her?” They never spoke a word after him, when he would rise to leave, and Pietro was glad of that. He didn’t know quite how to explain it to them.

When he presented the puzzle to Wanda she smiled, and took his hand. “We don’t just share a soul, as twins do,” she had said. “We have no one else, so we have become like one organism too. And an organism never denies itself what it can give itself, if it helps.” Pietro smiled, and interlinked his fingers with his sister’s.

After that, that was how he remembered them. Not just halves of a whole, but part of the same being.

 

* * *

 

The protest they next go to is different. Wanda and Pietro help carry a sign, but when Wanda finds the pulsing spirit of Novi Grad, she casts a worried glance to Pietro. Pietro shifts to stand closer to her. He stands to her left side and not her right, and it feels wrong that he stands there, but there was no other space. They are right beside each other when the man in the labcoat and his flanking soldiers confront them.

The glances Wanda and Pietro throw to each other are both questioning, and both shake their heads, momentary, barely perceptible. They listen to what he says, and realise they have heard it before; at the bins, from the man with the army trousers and the neat little glasses.

Some go with the man - Doctor List, they hear him introducing himself to some of them, with an ingratiating smile. Wanda is shaking, and no giddiness from the bright pulsing heart of Novi Grad is strong enough to cheer her. Pietro carries her back to the church, and tucks her in, but she is still awake. She is watching the square outside, watching closely, and the light - from lamps, from fires, from torches, all reflect in her eyes. She looks like a witch, to Pietro, lying still on the floor, face pale, eyes alight with near-scarlet light. Pietro sets some little food by her - filched from the school cafeteria - and tucks himself in. He knows there is no point in trying to soothe Wanda, when she is like this.

 

* * *

 

Wanda is quiet, over the next few days, and locked into herself. Her eyes look blank to all but Pietro, who knows her distant gaze and crossed arms means she is thinking, deeply. Pietro stays beside her, as much as he can, guiding her to class, to work, where Wanda is on autopilot. In his own mind Pietro thinks.

He knows what it is has shaken Wanda - the sight of this new individual, this Doctor List, offering the same promise as the man on the streets. That is not hard for Pietro to string together. The man who gave them sandwiches, and tried to convert Gaptooth &co is the same man who got a large number of protesters out of jail for nothing and gave them his card, and is apparently allied with this Doctor List, as they promised the same. That much is simple.

What is harder is mapping his sister’s thoughts, to understand her concern.

He knows that, unlike himself, Wanda has a few well made, maintained and managed morals, that she holds to. Ones that mean she helps children on the streets, talks to Andrej, and allowed her to bond to Maya. He knows she wants vengeance just as much as he does, but that she is more careful in how she would seek to obtain it. Her plan to kill the arsonists accounted for much, while being random enough to ensure no great investigation.

With his mind whirring over it constantly it does not take Pietro so long as he might, to understand his sister’s reservations with trusting the ones who manipulated people into trusting them without saying what they promised. He understands, quickly, why even a higher up coming out, and telling them some fragment of truth makes Wanda pause. Now he has his sister’s thoughts he too pauses. The offer, he knows, is good. The doctor truly believed he might make some weapons, capable of fighting on S.H.I.E.L.D.’s level. The doctor, also, didn’t say anything of risks, and that warns Pietro more than anything.

Pietro’s mind slows to normal speeds. Pietro watches over his sister. And Pietro waits for her to decide their fate.

 

* * *

 

When, three days later, Wanda goes, “I think we should go to them.” it is the first time Pietro had said so vehement an outright _no_ to her in long years. Wanda’s face does not fall. Instead, her jaw sets, and she repeats herself. “I think we should go to them,” she says, and reaches for his hand. “Let me tell you _why_.”

Pietro listens to her argument. When she has said each piece he refutes, or refuses, or argues for the sake of holding his point. Wanda holds onto his hand, and listens.

And then she makes her argument again.

This was how they had resolved vehement disagreements as children, but it had been a long time since it was necessary. They shared a soul, behaved as one organism, such disagreements had become rarer as they had grown closer. Wanda made her argument, and Pietro argued back. They took breaks, for work, for school, for food and sleep. But when they could they debated it, constantly, back and forth, back and forth. It was no war of attrition for them, but war of their logic. Whoever could counter everything won.

 

* * *

 

The day they decide to go to the castle the skies are bleak. Wanda has been arguing this for weeks, wearing her brother down with fresh arguments, new counterpoints, until he has no arguments left.

As she reminds him, over and over, this will put them on a level with Stark; will allow them, at last, to take their vengeance. Pietro does not tell Wanda that they had not said this would work. He does not tell her that this may kill them. He does not tell her what he does not know, nor what he does. He does not tell her he would not want to take their vengeance, if she was not there with him. He has said these things all before, and she has countered or comforted him for every one. Instead, he wraps his arm around her, kisses her forehead, and hoists his backpack higher.

They do not plan to return to the church.

 

* * *

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave comments!


	8. Chapter 8

It is a long walk, through the city, and through the woods. They had spent the last few days gently withdrawing from the world. Pietro and Wanda each resigned from their jobs, made reasons to be gone from school until the end of the year - two last weeks before they would be formally gone from the place. They gather together all their things, and say goodbyes to those who know them. Andrej listens when Wanda says her goodbye to him, and calls him Snowsmoke one last time. The piece of paper she passes him, and the carton of cigarettes get tucked into pockets, and his arms wrap around her waist, his face twisted into her chest in a brief embrace before he nods a farewell, and nods once when she whispers to him to try to get out of the city, out of the country if he can, to get to a safe place, away from riots and civil war and witch-hunts.

Wanda knows they will not return.

The forest is bleak, for the most part, as bleak as the skies above. Snow is on the ground, in some places, despite the season, and the pines are oddly bare. It is Wanda who spots the first guard, and Pietro who gets them past him.

The guards are closer together the closer they get in. Wanda distracts them, Pietro knocks them out. They walk, smartly, right up to the gate, and sneak past a dozing man, who trusts the perimeter too well. It is not hard to find the men the man at the fire had said ran this place. The man called Strucker and _Herr Doktor_ List are talking in the hallway.

“Hello,” Wanda says. “We want to sign up.”

 

* * *

 

Pietro has to hold himself back from _screaming_ when they put him in a different cell to his sister. It is beside hers, yes, and he can feel the weight of her moving around through the floorboards, hear her through the fine wall. He knows that in the next room Wanda’s pacing means she is thinking the same, and not that she is thinking over what they had said.

_(“We have many volunteers, it will take time for us to get to you. Maybe if you had agreed earlier…”)_

They both sleep poorly that night.

 

* * *

 

With dawn comes training. They are made to run through the forest, run on treadmills, use machines called “rowers” that Pietro swears are some invention of the devil, or possibly even Tony Stark. Their meals are measured, and at the end of the day they are given some test. Wanda passes with flying colours, and Pietro is close behind.

Before they are sent back to their cells they curl together on a bench, wrapped around each other. Wanda’s head is pressed into her brother’s neck, Pietro’s face in his sister’s hair. They breathe each other in, remember each other’s warmth and scent, and whisper their nightmares to each other before they are forced apart, and back to their rooms.

 

* * *

 

They hear and guess, more than know, as the other volunteers vanish. Angry notes scribbled by Doctor List, or his assistants onto clipboards and into notebooks, arguments in the halls between the Baron and the Doctor.

Body-bag after body-bag, carrying corpses and cadavers down to the castle’s foundations.

Wanda glances to Pietro, and he shakes his head. They have come this far. He will not give up on his sister’s plan, just because others have died. They had both of them always expected to die, and in this they might just die together.

 

* * *

 

Most days they spend training. Once their trainers decide they are up to weight they get given odd tasks, puzzles, quizzes and written exams, challenge after challenge after challenge. In the evenings they ache to their bones, but manage to beg time to sit together, talk together, curl together. When the Baron comes into the rec room they share with the other volunteers that evening he catches a glimpse of them, wrapped around each other as they had when they were small, when they had hidden in the rubble of their home.

He mutters a single, quiet word. “Children.”

Pietro catches Wanda’s wrists before she can rise, and Wanda sits firmly on Pietro’s ankles.

“We should not strike him,” Pietro murmurs. Wanda huffs an ill-amused breath out her nose.

“If I didn’t ache so much from hauling weights through the woods I’d still have tried.”

Pietro muffles his laugh in Wanda’s hair, and the twins wrap closer together again.

 

* * *

 

The groups of volunteers are taken away in groups of ten. Each week a new ten vanishes, and it worries the twins, given the body-bags, that it is only a week between each being taken away, and all ten dying. As the numbers drop the twins spend what free time they can curled and talking in the rec room. They count days carefully, and note when one group of ten manages to make it almost a fortnight. On the thirteenth day they hear screaming from the far end of the castle, see soldiers running, and the next day another ten are taken away for testing.

No one dares to ask.

 

* * *

 

“Do you think we’re really volunteers?” Wanda asks one day, “Or are we experiment-fodder? No one has asked to leave - regular food and a stable place to stay would do that - but do you think they’d be allowed to go if they did?”

Pietro strokes a hand through Wanda’s hair, combing out the knots, and shakes his head. “More likely they’d be shunted into the next ten, and vanish into a body-bag in the basement.”

It does not take any more words for the twins to start considering how to escape, if they decide they have had enough.

 

* * *

 

They count the days. Most groups are still gone within a week, but some last almost full fortnights. Wanda muses, one day, that a week is very precise, and suggests to Pietro that most died before even then, and that they use a week to make them less worried.

Pietro shrugs, but agrees. They count the number of days the next group lasts, and are surprised when they last ten, before the screeching sound of bending metal and scratched glass makes its way from one end of the castle to the other.

 

* * *

 

They have watched the numbers in the rec room fall and fall. They know the remaining eight they share it with - Andrew (kicked out of a seminary), Hedwig (pickpocket), Otto (ex-police), Casimir (a small, quiet man), Urszula (ex-military), and Theresa and Rafael (spouses) - and they know it is only a matter of days before they are carted off to a new area of the castle, and new cells.

When the soldiers come to the rec room with Doctor List Wanda and Pietro stand together, their hands so tightly clasped their knuckles were almost as pale as the bones beneath.

 

* * *

 

The virus stings when it goes into their veins. They know - in part at least - what it is made of. Some complex retrovirus, with pieces of Chitauri blood, and some strange other thing, bound together and into place with the new power of the sceptre. When they first hear this, they think it will be blue. Blue as the Tesseract, blue as the Sceptre, blue as Chitauri skin and blood and the glow of their weapons.

Instead it is gold and yellow. The gold antiqued, and old, like polluted Roman figures of their gods, the yellow freshly acid-burning like pus. Wanda places a hand on her brother’s shoulder.

“Are you sure?”

Pietro eyes the syringes. Wanda can see the tension in him, singing like a compressed spring. He nods. “It is the only way for us to be strong enough. It is the only way we will have the weapons we need. I’m sure, Wanda.”

Wanda settles onto her bed, and watches as Pietro settles on his, and both link their fingers together as the virus worms it’s way into their veins.

 

* * *

 

It hurts. The virus burning through them is worse than the blinding flash of light as their home was destroyed, worse than the grief of losing their parents, and it burns through their minds and bodies. They twist their fingers so tightly together they feel as though their fingers might break, but anchor each other all the same.

They have each other, and they have yet to take their vengeance, and that drives them to life more than anything.

 

* * *

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave comments!


	9. Chapter 9

With their fever comes dreams. Time speeds and slows, sounds warp, and the only thing that stays the same is the firm grip of their fingers together. To Wanda the way time warps around her reminds her of the ticking hands of the clock in the hall at school. The way the silver second hand would tick-tick-tick-tick-tick on and on and on, silver and shining against white, on a blue school wall. She feels the tick-tick-tick-ticking down to her bones and writhes in trying to escape from it. Her fingers almost slip loose from Pietro’s but his hand leaps, grasps, and claps around her hand and thumb. Wanda grips harder, and digs her nails into his hand.

To Pietro the fever is red. Red like the light coming through his tight-shut lids, scarlet and crimson and flesh. He wants to move, to twist, to get up and run, and interlocks his fingers with Wanda’s so he does not. He knows Wanda will survive it. She has to. If she does not then he knows he will die too, but Wanda had chosen this, believed it would allow them their vengeance.

Pietro’s hand gripped only tighter when her nails dug into the soft flesh of his palm, his mind focussing on a single mantra: _Live, Wanda, live, live, live._

 

* * *

 

It is Wanda who wakes first. There are no techs or medics in the room - she can hear screaming down the hall, and assumes they are distracted as a lightbulb in the hall blows - and so she picks up the chart at the end of her bed.

She cannot make head nor tail of it, until she spots dates. She counts through the sheets, and measures the difference between the date on the first and the date on the last. It has been five days.

Her fingers are still entangled in Pietro’s, and she swipes her thumb over the back of his hand. Down the hall the screams fade into… something. There is silence.

It is about an hour before she hears footsteps pacing down the hall, and pause with a single squeak. There is a metallic scraping noise, and the sound of boots on metal. A few quiet squeaks later the lights in the hall flicker on again. Wanda sighs, and lifts her brother’s hand. The kiss she presses to his fevered skin is soft, and the breath she inhales carries the scent of both Pietro and the sickness to her.

 

* * *

 

When the medics see she is awake - several hours later, having rolled a body bag on a squeaking gurney down the hall - they run checks. Check her pupil dilation, her temperature, ask her innumerable questions. Throughout it all Wanda does not let go of Pietro’s hand.

Before they rush away - as a junior medic runs in almost shouting - Wanda manages to ask them to send in clean sheets. Short minutes later a soldier comes in, clean laundry in his arms. Wanda stands, and holds out a hand to take them, and watches as, with neat efficiency, he strips the bed, takes each piece of bedding, and makes the bed anew. His nod to her is polite as he leaves, laundry gathered in his arms, and his eyes hold hers just a touch longer than normal.

Wanda strokes her thumb over her brother’s hand, and sits back down on her bed. She has no intention of leaving until he wakes.

 

* * *

 

Four days.

That is how long Pietro remains sleeping. Usually he is still, but, sometimes, his feet move, as though he is running, shuffling, shifting, or the weird little jitters he would get when nervous. Contrary to what the medics guessed he never writhes, never twists, and never lets go of Wanda’s fingers. Instead he stays, still and shaking, fingers locked with Wanda’s.

The first day they bring her food, light, because for five days she had been on nothing but an IV and fluids. She tears into it, not ravenous but wishing for something to do. She could think, she could wonder, she could stroke her brother’s hand and hope he woke soon, but the room was mostly empty, and she’d figured out her chart and her brother’s by the time they bring her the tray that evening.

She eats one-handedly, and gets crumbs only on the tray, by sheer dint of effort. When they remove the tray they turn out the light, and Wanda slips under fresh covers, fingers still intertwined with her brother’s, and falls asleep watching his profile.

 

* * *

 

The world narrowed, not to a drop of water, or the ticking of a clock, but to Pietro’s breathing. Wanda matched her breaths to his, slowed herself down from the frantic pace her fever had given her, and grasps her twin’s hand tight. She has no intention of letting go. She dozes away long hours, rests when she cannot read, dozes when she cannot dance, eulogizes what she and her brother have lost when she cannot eat. She waits away the hours.

Sometimes when she blinks she thinks she sees something dancing in the corner of her vision. Dancing scarlet, rich as blood, but sometimes as thin and pale as peach skin.

When she tells the medics they check her eyes. _Subconjunctival haemorrhaging, maybe_ , is what they say, and then click off the light, shake their heads and shrug. _Nothing we can see_. Before they leave the room they mark on her chart, mark her brother’s and glance to the twin’s joined hands. Wanda kept the catheter and the bed-pan, and avoided eating heavy foods, so she had no cause to leave. They appreciate dedication, in HYDRA, but even they wonder if the twins’ nature isn’t a touch overboard.

Wanda sees their expressions, her eyes narrow, and she squeezes her brother’s hand. Even in his fever-sleep his fingers twitch against hers. Wanda’s thumb rubs a smooth circle on her brother’s hand, not so feverish and sticky with sweat now, three days later, and watches as the medics edge out of the room, edge away down the corridor, and leave them be. In the hall the light bulb seems to have blown again, leaving their dim shadows to vanish into the darkness.

An hour later there is a scrape in the hall, a squeaking sound, a scrape again, and the lights flicker on. Wanda plucks up her chart, and then her brother’s, and looks over their information. She, she knows, is fine. Her brother’s chart has told a more worrying story.

Her fingers trace the changing lines, up and down for temperature, worrying in their peaks and troughs. She counts twelve times she could have lost her brother, and her frantic heartbeat only calms as her fingertip traces the smooth line of the past three days. Since she woke, the charts read, he has been steadier.

Wanda glances to her brother’s sleeping face, and wonders if her waking meant he stopped worrying for her, and was free to focus on his own health.

With one hand she sets her chart on its peg, and moves to set her brother’s on his, trailing his hand with her. The lino on the floor is cold against her bare feet, but she stands by her brother’s bedside all the same. Pietro’s face is peaceful, for the most part. Sometimes there is a frown, or a grimace, but it smoothes out when Wanda’s thumb runs over his skin, or her fingers squeeze on his. Wanda leans and presses a kiss to his brow, and returns to her bed.

She does not dare to predict when he will wake, but she will dare to hope.

 

* * *

 

When she sleeps that night, it is slowly. She has stayed awake on purpose some days, believing so fully that her brother will wake, that his twitching fingers mean that he is close to waking, that soon he will come back to her.

But he never does.

Wanda falls asleep with her head turned to face her brother, and each change of expression on his face makes her want to stay awake, just a bit longer, to be there when he wakes. When her eyes eventually close it is well past midnight, and only because the darkness caused by blown lightbulbs means she can no longer watch her brother’s face so closely.

 

* * *

 

Wanda wakes screaming.

The nightmare had come as she’d slept, had crept from her buried memories, through her mind, and she remembers the first week she and Pietro had spent on the streets. They had not known the gangs, they had not known the territories, and though they knew how to stand up for themselves they had not known how to fight like the others did.

Wanda remembers the day they had been split apart. She had been pinned against the wall, and Pietro, trying to get to her, had been pushed down, kicked down, kicked in the stomach, and Wanda bit the boy holding her to get to her brother.

Except this time, this was not the memory. Pietro wasn’t able to stand. This was a nightmare and Pietro’s face was pale and bloodied, bruises ran down his arms, and when she went to pick him up her fingers came away from his head carrying pieces of his skull, and intestines spilled from his shirt. Wanda screams because she cannot do anything else, not with her brother, her _twin_ gone from her, half of her, half her life torn from her, to death.

She screams and screams and screams, and only stills when a shaking hand touches her face.

“Wanda,” breathes a voice. “Wanda. Shh-sh. You’re ok. We’re ok.”

Wanda moves instinctively, sitting up, curling to her brother. He is sat on the edge of the bed, and she half thinks this is a dream--

_(must be, must be, must be, he has not woken yet, the ninth day, he will die soon, nightmare all over again)_

\--but he stays there, present and steady, his hands touching her cheeks, fingers stroking away tears, and knotting in her hair. Wanda feels the headache starting in her brow from her crying, smells her brother’s scent as his arms close around her, and finally believes she is awake. Her fingers dig into his arms, her face presses into his neck, and she wraps herself in him, and tries to believe they will not come so close to a divided death again.

They were born together, and neither has any intent of dying apart.

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are always welcome and loved!


	10. Chapter 10

When the medics come in, in the morning, and see them both curled into each other on Wanda’s bed, pillows wrapped around them like a fort as they lean against the wall, they rush straight back out again. A few moments later and Doctor List is with them, shining a light into their eyes, taking their pulses, checking the colour of their tongues and tonsils.

“Perfect health,” he says, “Or as good as. Water, for you, Mr. Maximoff. The Baron will come by later to decide your training.”

It is Wanda who dares, and catches the doctor’s sleeve before he goes. “The others,” she asks. “Hedwig, Casimir, Urszula--”

“Dead,” the doctor said. “Half of them died within three days. The last died the day you woke.”

There are tremors in Wanda’s hand, when she lets go of his sleeve, and Pietro’s hand rubs her back as the medics and the doctor leave.

 

* * *

 

Training is different now. They aren’t entirely sure what to do with them - they show no changes, none at all - so they resume the original training, and hope that either something will show in them, or they will figure out where the virus went wrong. They are trained, and told to report back anything unusual.

For days there is nothing.

 

* * *

 

In the evenings they are still sent to different cells - there are no other volunteers remaining, so they go back to their old hallways. When they are done with training they curl together in the rec room, and chat and think. Sometimes Wanda wants nothing more than to leave, but when Pietro whispers to her that he can feel his responses getting faster she wants nothing more than to stay. If this place really _did_ give them powers, or even some small advantage then Wanda knows they must stay, must hope for a chance to battle Tony Stark.

It is not for several moments, when Pietro points it out, does she realise there is scarlet dancing around her fingertips, as she taps them over her arms.

 

* * *

 

They do not tell the Doctor or the Baron of what they have noticed for three long days. Wanda wants to be as sure as possible, and Pietro agrees it would do no good to give the men false hope. If they do have gifts, powers of some kind, then they are the golden eggs in a carton of cracked ones, and proving to be only Iron Pyrite could also prove them dead.

 

* * *

 

The day they tell them it is early. They did not go to the cafeteria as usual, but rather went straight to the Baron’s office. On his desk two files sit under his fingertips, and his eyes - one hidden behind a monocle, one easy and open - are inscrutable. Wanda and Pietro do not let go of each other’s hands.

When they tell him his smile is as pleased as a predator, wide and full of teeth. Wanda sends dancing scarlet whisking through her hair, weaving through Pietro’s, plucking the Baron's monocle away from his eye and setting it on the table with a delicate clatter. Pietro speeds through the room, picking up the monocle and setting it at his own eye before his silver trail leaves. The Baron sits back, smiling, and spreads his hands.

“Well,” he says. “Let us call Doctor List to plan your new training. We have a success.” His final grin makes Pietro draw closer to his sister. He has no wish to leave Wanda to stand alone with this man.

 

* * *

 

Training now is quite different. Where before they were expected to reach the peak of health and fitness and stay there, now their every move is monitored. Pietro runs rigged up to machines, checking his pulse, his breathing, his top speed. Wanda is asked again and again to move things, from small blocks of wood and tiny coins, to piecing together a puzzle with nothing but her dancing scarlet tendrils.

Sometimes they ask her to break things, or take them apart, and that comes even easier. Sometimes they have them train so long and hard that when they return to their rooms they are still lost in training. Wanda splinters together many of her wooden blocks this way, and Pietro concusses himself constantly.

 

* * *

 

Wanda grows with precision each day. Where at first her hands had to be covered over with bandages from all the splinters hitting her, her precision grew so that none of the wood left her scarlet field. Pietro’s speed grew faster, and faster, until even Wanda could no longer see his moments of thought, or his frowns. For a few days she even wonders if he paused or frowned at all anymore and Pietro grins.

“Of course I do. Just because you can’t keep up for once,” he says, sticking his tongue out and sprinting to the other side of the room in a heartbeat, “Doesn’t mean I don’t!”

The silver trail still follows him, no matter how fast he goes, no matter how much they try to train it from him. Wanda thinks it is like her dancing scarlet; a colour innate to their gifts, and, thus, inescapable. The Doctor scoffs, the Baron smirks, and Pietro, quietly, agrees. Training proceeds apace, and they lose all track of time.

 

* * *

 

When Wanda first feels the power building behind her eyes she clenches them shut. She knows what she has done already, flicks of her fingers mashing together blocks of wood into so much splinters. She realises that the scarlet is reaching for Pietro and closes her eyes, clenches her fists and tries with all her might to stop it getting out. Beside her Pietro senses her distress, and his hand, cool, not feverish, brushes over her brow, down her cheek.

“Wanda?”

“It wants you. To get to you. The scarlet. I don’t know if I can make it stop, Pietro, _please_.”

Wanda’s eyes stay closed, and Pietro bows his head to hers. His brow brushes by hers before he lifts his face, his lips ghosting a kiss over her brow. “Let it out. I can run from it now, if I need to. Let it out.” Wanda shakes her head, but Pietro’s hand catches her chin. “I promise, Wanda, I promise. I will run if it starts to hurt me.”

Wanda’s eyes open. In Pietro’s silvered gaze she can see the scarlet in her eyes, and knows this is not like the way her power has manifested before. The scarlet dances at her fingertips, twists and dances and pulls. It wants to touch Pietro, touch his _mind_ , that she senses.

“Be ready,” she whispers. “Be ready to run.” her hand raises, fingertips twitching without meaning to, scarlet dancing in twisting curlicues and sinking into Pietro’s head, into his brain.

And then a bridge opens between her mind and his, and they both collapse to the floor.

 

* * *

 

Wanda did not know her power could do this - bring her closer to the only person she was close to. The passage between her brother’s mind and hers was real, she could sense that, know that, with a keen precision her scarlet knew. When she cracks open her eyes she sees Pietro opposite her. They are both curled on hard stone, solid concrete, both curled like children, legs drawn up, arms close to their chests. His eyes are bright and blue, and she can sense the scarlet in her gaze.

Her mouth shapes the words, even as her mind sends them: _Can you feel it too?_

Across the floor Pietro nods. His mouth is slightly open, Wanda doesn’t know if it is fear or awe-- shock. She feels it rising from his mind. He had always known she understood people, but now she could know them in a way beyond any normal human. He is shocked. Wanda stretches out a shaking hand, runs trembling fingers down his stubbled cheek.

 _I am still me_ , she wants to say. And, _You will not let me lose myself, will you?_ She feels fear, panic building. She has a link to her brother’s mind; not just the understanding they had always had as twins, but something new, and it terrifies her.

Pietro’s hand reaches out, and clasps hers. “You will not lose yourself,” he promises. “Not while I am here. Not ever.”

 

* * *

 

Wanda practices her new skill with Pietro for hours before they consider telling the Baron. They know they must, eventually. He will find out, he will doubt their loyalty, he will mock them. They can take that. But he would also take their chance for vengeance, and that, that they dare not lose, not after coming so far. Wanda waits only until the next day before going to the Baron, putting a thought into his head, and letting him see her scarlet eyes.

They are not always scarlet, not now. They are when she links to minds, but after her mind had made the bridge to Pietro’s the scarlet had started to fade, like it was not a part of it, like it was a gift of their gifts. Wanda lets her eyes glow with scarlet, shows the Baron how she can pluck information from minds, how she can slip ideas in, and the smile the Baron gives to Wanda makes Pietro more fearful for his sister than ever.

 _Calm_ , Wanda sends down their bridge, as the winds of Pietro’s mind howl through the lianas of his tree. _Calm. I could crush his mind, if I chose. He is nothing anymore._

That scares Pietro even more, and he pushes perspective down their bridge, brightening scarlet-going-cerise back to blood-warmth with his touches of rich blue and bright silver. _They are people too_ , he sends. _You always said that. Do not lose that now, Wanda, please. It is what makes you, you._

Wanda’s mind stops, the singing choir of memory and thought pausing. Her mind’s choir has been singing _Dies Irae_ , brightly burning, candles of concepts going from gold to a silver colder even than his own. It is all vengeance and blood and anger, the right of a god to visit wrath on those lesser, and now it clatters to quiet, voice after memorial voice falling silent.

From deep in the crypts of Wanda’s mind a new song rises, lone voice, joined by voice after voice, a glorious rising _Te Deum_. _Thy glory_ , her mind sings, and makes no claim to glory itself.

 

* * *

 

Later, when they leave their training, and sit in the rec room, the relief Wanda sends him is overwhelming. Her mind is singing its _Te Deum_ , is singing _Non Nobis Domine_ , is singing praises upwards, and making no claim to them itself. One whispered _Dies Irae_ creeps out and is drowned in a wave of bloodied scarlet, and Wanda’s hand almost crushes Pietro’s, so tightly she grips his hand.

“Do not let me become inhuman,” she whispers. “I do not want to be anything other than me.”

Pietro nods, and kisses her hair. “I promised you,” he says. “You will never lose yourself, not as long as I am here, not ever.”

 

* * *

 

It is weeks after they have started training Wanda’s new gifts that a change is made. They have made her get information from people, give it to people, made them dance a jig across the room, and made them kill without meaning to. Now they ask something new. Not for something certain, solid, tangible. Instead they ask for fear, for hate, for anger, and for them to be twisted into a target’s mind.

Wanda finds it so easy to do, to watch the eyes of people blank for seconds while their minds twist them for an eternity, that she feels as though she is shaking apart, before Pietro holds her. The blindly fearful gaze of the soldier she had worked on stays with her, and she and Pietro stay curled in the rec room for long hours after they should have gone to sleep, before Wanda is finally still and calm.

 

* * *

 

When Wanda wakes, choking, from her nightmare, she finds her mind lashing outwards, reaching toward those nearby, and reins it in. The nightmare is still fresh - rubble crushing, dust in her mouth, the day their parents had died but made worse because in the nightmare there was no Pietro there to cradle her safely. She knows Pietro is in the room beside hers and pads to the door, twists her fingers scarlet and makes the lock open. At Pietro’s door she does the same, and he wakes, instantly. As soon as he recognises her, mere moments after the door creaks open, he sits up, and stretches an arm to her.

Wanda can feel his voice singing, bright and burning; _love you love you love you_. His arms wrap around her as she finally shakes free of her nightmare, raises scarlet fingertips to his head, and remakes the bond they shared when waking. The voice is louder, warmer, with the bond present. Not a mind calling from one mountain to another, but clear and crisp as a phone line. Wanda relaxes into her brother, and lets her breathing calm. Around her she can feel her brother’s mind, all murmured _love you’s_ and _you’re safe_ and _I will not let them hurt you_. They are words they never say aloud, because they know them to be true, and to hear them as the core panicked tenets of her brother’s mind calms her.

She falls asleep, curled against her brother, letting the song of his mind soothe her back to rest.

 

* * *

 

The novelty of their bond wears off rather rapidly.

It does not take them long to learn how to maintain it day and night, and so they do, unless they are too exhausted. They keep it constantly only after Pietro has a nightmare, a mirror of Wanda’s own: the destruction of their childhood home, the loss of their parents, but no twin to share it with. Wanda feels her brother’s mind crying out with it and through the solid concrete wall between them sends curlicues of scarlet power toward him, lashing together their bond again. She marches down the bridge, cascades into his mind, and tears rubble from him to lift him from the nightmare. Though they are in different rooms it feels to Pietro as though he is curled in her arms, when they rest in the bridge between their minds.

The longer they keep the bond in place, the more they find their very selves slipping. Ideas and memories, thoughts and concepts slip down the bridge without their meaning to. Wanda leans against the wall that divides them one evening, tilting her head back and laughing with only sarcasm.

_Two halves of a whole, brother, that is what we are, is it not?_

Pietro responds with a wave of love, of trust, of protectiveness. He never tries to bar her from his mind, he trusts her with it implicitly, but Wanda finds it trying to hear the constant talk of it, to feel the unending well of love and trust and protectiveness without cessation or pause.

When Pietro hears _that_ his mind slinks back, slinks inward, and sets up a whirling, dancing wind. Ideas and thoughts do not slip out unless they are sent, memories only when the flurry slows with sleep, emotions, only when they are forceful. With the weight of her brother’s mind made more distant again she relaxes as she had not known she needed to. From Pietro’s mind she feels a tentative sliver of affection, of warmth, of comfort, and welcomes the glowing piece of silver in, sending her own golden sliver back to him. The novelty is gone, yes, but there is still much to learn.

 

* * *

 

In their nightmares, in their dreams, even just day-to-day, Wanda seems to Pietro to be dancing. In her mind, to his mind, into other minds, she dances, twisting and turning curlicues of scarlet and shadows, dark hair, pale skin, and scarlet, scarlet, _scarlet_. Pietro knows Wanda has always loved red, from gold-red embers, to crimson blood, to burgundy wine, to scarlet-scarlet-scarlet. That it now twists about her, dancing with her, startles him no more than the silver trail he leaves when he runs startles her.

Behind the whirling dervish he set a-dancing about the brim of his mind he makes panels. He knows his sister’s mind, knows she will not always call him for help, even if she needs it, just as sometimes he does not call to her.

( _Never calls to her_ , he reminds himself. He protects her. Not the other way around. He is the elder. It is his duty to keep her safe)

He watches through the panels. When he sees her straining he sends a sliver of silvered strength, or mercurial power, or blue-blue-blue a-dancing, and it makes its way through their bridge to her mind, turns to gold or brown, scarlet or black, and becomes whatever she needs of it. Watching her dancing scarlet strengthen when his power becomes hers makes him smile, and the brief, bright grins she gives him make him feel _right_.

Wanda had chosen this for them. This risk, this new possible power. It had paid off, but through her five-day fever, his nine, he had not been able to help her as he ever had. It felt wrong, not to be at his sister’s side, made only worse by their separate cells. He missed being able to reach to touch her wrist, squeeze her hand, tuck his head to her hair and breathe her in and know she was well. He only had speed, not mind-magic, and could not be so sure as she. Every pulse of _safe_ Wanda sends him makes him feel only _slightly_ less useless.

 

* * *

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are very much appreciated!


	11. Chapter 11

When the Avengers come to attack the castle, the twins have been there for one year, one month and three days. Pietro had counted them, tallied up in his mind, and Wanda found each scored line, scarring one long blue-green liana. ( _Each day with them_ is _a scar_ , Pietro says. _I would rather be seeking vengeance_.) In this time Wanda’s skill has improved, Pietro’s speed increased. They are granted more freedom, given clothes to choose from, rather than just overalls or scrubs. Pietro’s hair has gone odd, black still, at the roots, but it sunbleaches too rapidly in what weak light they have, and looks silver more often than not. They have changed, both of them, and Pietro has been wanting out for weeks.

It does not surprise Wanda, terribly, when Pietro begs her to let him join the fight. As the call goes through the castle, calling soldiers to stations, they have no orders. They stand back. Wanda can see the tension in her brother’s body, and takes his hand. They have been hearing stories for weeks, months, since the Battle Over the Potomac, when Captain America and the Black Widow revealed that S.H.I.E.L.D. was riddled with HYDRA, and burned it all down. The Avengers were coming, battling and burning their way to each and every base of the now-gone organisation. Others had been offered up as prey, as distractions. The castle of Novi Grad was one of the last, and Wanda does not wish to stay put, even as she does.

As the Baron and the Doctor talk, as the battle burns outside the walls, Pietro shifts, tension showing even despite his speed. Wanda holds his hand still, as he bounces foot to foot, plays her fingers over each of his, and tries to hold him there with her.

Even as Strucker denies them the battle, Pietro’s mind sings and howls the chance down the bridge, to Wanda’s mind.

“I want to,” he murmurs fervently, Sokovian tripping off his tongue. “I want to go, I want to fight. _Stark_ is out there.”

Wanda’s hand runs over his. “Still,” she says, “Be still. We will battle them soon enough.” Pietro shifts, foot to foot, his hand twitching in hers. Wanda’s mind stretches, touches the warning tripwires she set in the minds of the Baron and the Doctor. One is singing now, singing out _surrender_ , and even as Pietro asks again to go, she nods. “This may be our last chance.” She stretches to press a kiss to her brother’s cheek. “Drop me by the gate, and run safe,” she murmurs, and they are gone in a silver wind.

 

* * *

 

Even as she waits, Wanda can feel the dancing joy of her brother’s mind. The fight is different to the practices they ran, to the street fights they fought, but it is joy he feels nonetheless, to be running free, in so much fresh air. The laugh he gives as he plucks an arrow from the air is bright and golden to Wanda. Even as she waits, hidden in an alcove, her lips twitch in a smile. She sends a reproving prod to Pietro’s mind at his taunt to the man he trips, but stretches further into her brother’s mind, setting a stage to watch.

Wanda closes her eyes, sends her mind spinning out scarlet feelers, and watches for alien minds. She feels one, encased in metal, probing at the reaches of her range, and knows it must be Stark. Closer in she feels the Baron, the Doctor, soldier after soldier, medic after medic. Her bond to her brother is strung taut, each movement of Pietro farther and farther afield feeling like her flesh is being pinched.

But she has practiced for this. This bond is a gift of their gifts, makes her closer to the one she is closest too, and she gladly expends power and endures pain to keep it in place.

 

* * *

 

Wanda is ready, when the Captain comes in. Standing in her alcove she feels his mind draw close, feels the Baron walk by. The Baron’s mind is as firmly regimented as ever, even as those regiments shift and warp to allow for surrender. The Captain’s mind is not one she has ever seen before, it is both old and new in a fascinating and terrible way. She does not delve in, does not make a bridge, but watches his mind, a home of cream and gold and blue, and desecrated as terribly as a temple. Statues and memories lay shattered on the floor of it, and even as new plaster covers chips there are still gaping holes. _Loss_ rings through this mind she now recognises, and she files it away for later.

She does not wish to think what she is doing to this man, as she snaps her hands, cracks her fingers, and sends him tumbling downstairs.

She has barely shut the doors before Pietro dashes by, scoops her up, and sets her downstairs.

“Stay safe,” he murmurs, and runs off to check the perimeter. Wanda can feel the metal mind moving, but says nothing. Pietro will not leave, not if he knows Stark is here, and she wants a chance to take apart the man who killed their parents.

She draws closer, slowly, and watches him. Her scarlet dances around her feet, muffling her steps. Scarlet lights her eyes, glows down her hands, and with her fingers dancing she sets a single thing into his mind.

 _Your worst nightmare_ , it says, _and the end of all you love._

She watches the scarlet sink into the man who killed her parents, and watches his mind shift from watching readiness, to ever-changing fear.

No one moves when they enter her nightmares now. That had been a problem, when she had first started work on it, people wandering in the nightmares she made for them, but now she has precision. A nightmare she makes can feel like moments, feel like minutes, feel like hours. Seconds will pass, and the only movement they will make will be to breathe.

The scarlet has barely died from her eyes when he wakes from it. Even as he steps forward to take the sceptre, Pietro arrives. His mind is dancing, he has searched out what remains, has seen what is happening outside, and recalls their final purpose: protect the sceptre. Wanda can feel the itch beneath his skin, the one to step forward, to strike Stark, but he sees the final fading tendrils of scarlet around his sister’s hands, and halts when her arm raises. He waits on Wanda’s mark, even as he disagrees.

“We’re just going to let them take it?”

Wanda smiles as the man who murdered their parents takes his undoing. She sends it down the bridge to Pietro’s mind, the nightmare she induced, how it was made, precisely, to shatter his reason, shatter his world. Pietro’s question is answered without words. _See?_ her memories display. _He will wreak his own end, and cease to be any kind of_ hero _._

 

* * *

 

They wait awhile, in the bowels of the castle, but it is not long before agents descend, coming to catalogue and collect. Pietro scoops his sister up, gathers the bags they had stashed when they were given greater freedoms, and they head to Novi Grad. Wanda spends barely moments in the silver flow of Pietro’s sprint, but rests against him all the same. They know the city. It holds no fear for them.

 

* * *

 

They had heard the call down the streets. Subtle stories, twisted tales. It has only been a few, scattered days. Wanda and Pietro hide in one of the safehouses Strucker had set up, but go to the burnt out house when they hear of the rumour. It calls people to their old haunt, to the church, and neither much wish to see who has claimed it now. It is Wanda’s mulling that decides it for them.

“Our gifts,” she says. “I can read a mind, you can get us out. We could go.”

Pietro blinks, his hand twitches over a charcoaled floor. “It is dangerous.”

Wanda inclines her head and smiles. “But so are we.”

 

* * *

 

They approach the church together, Wanda with certainty, Pietro watching around, jittering nervousness more and more evident as he slows down, tries to pretend to be as he was before the experiments. Wanda stretches her right hand back, makes Pietro slow, and calm, and heed her wordless warning. She can sense no mind within, even as she can feel the glowing brightness of the whole square, rife with life and fire and food.

The church is much as they remember. No one has tried to claim it as they did, and as they approach Pietro scuffs a foot lightly over Maya’s flagstone. It feels an age ago, that they buried the cat, and an age again that they had met her, with his new perception of time, but he remembers the grief very well. Wanda notices when his foot passes over the stone, and her hand reaches, momentarily, for his. In the bridge between their minds Pietro sends Wanda what he had thought that day, and Wanda sends him her memory of it in exchange.

As they pass beneath the arch Pietro moves ahead. If Wanda can sense no one, if Wanda cannot see someone with her senses, all it can be is a trap. He has the speed to survive one falling, and to save his sister too, and he will not let his sister die.

They notice, together, the figure seated on the chair. Pietro sends a query, Wanda sends a denial. _There is no one there, no mind glowing. No one._ Wanda steps forward, Wanda speaks, Wanda warns.

Ultron, metal muscles and glowing a softer red than Wanda’s eyes, stands.

Pietro’s step forward, Wanda’s step back, their movements closer, are instinctive more than anything else. _Brother, stay near_ , Wanda sends. _Sister, stay close_ , sends Pietro. This is new. This is unexpected. There is no singing, glowing, dancing mind to read. There is nothing but a metal man, Talos made in steel and silver. Wanda had expected _something_ from the nightmare she had sent spinning into Stark’s mind. She had not expected this.

 

* * *

 

As Ultron takes them to the castle he talks. Gives his name, gives ideas. Wanda is not sure how to read him, this man of metal, but he is open, like a child. As malicious as one spited, making the connections of one with little else but curiosity. Pietro’s eyes do not leave Wanda’s when he starts to tell Ultron how they lost their parents. The bridge is one anchor, to hold them through the sorrow they feel at the loss they remember through a broken crystal. Warped and overburdened, twisted and dusted with the seeds of the trust they now share. Their mind’s bridge is but one anchor. Sight and touch do so much more, when they recall what it was, to be trapped beneath rubble and brick, and have nothing to see but each other, and the name of Tony Stark. Pietro’s hand finds Wanda’s, feels her fingers tap over his knuckles. The touch anchors them, just enough for Pietro to look again to the metal man, who suggests other than killing Tony Stark.

Wanda remembers the fear of that day, of the two which followed, and lets it seep down the bridge, into her voice when she speaks. For a moment she fears Ultron, born of the sceptre, will see the bond strung between her mind and her brother’s, a sibling to himself.

She is thankful that he does not.

 

* * *

 

It is easy, to do the runs, to play the tricks he asks, to set people spinning into memory, into fear, as Ultron’s bodies and as Pietro take what they need. The variety of minds she knows now is greater, and it calms her. The castle had been hard, memories and minds all honed to HYDRA’s work. The city had been harder, a chaos of opinions rising in a cruel cacophony. This, this is easy, wandering through forests and fields, woods and wealds of minds. Some prickle with brambles, some are healing as dock, or as harmful as nettles. Some are great towering trees, like Pietro’s mind, and some are huts and houses, hospitals and churches, built of memory and thought. This, she realises, she can stand, and sends a glowing tendril of peace through the dervish dancing around her brother’s mind.

 

* * *

 

By the time they go to see Ulysses Klaue Wanda has learned minds well. She knows her job in Ultron’s plans, memorised what she is to do when the Avengers inevitably come.

They do not fail them.

Pietro sets of running, speeding through bullets and shouts, ducking and dodging, dancing and weaving through the chaos. Wanda settles back, watches Ultron’s secondaries join the fray. She feels the disgruntlement of her brother’s mind, when Captain America fells him, and tells him to stay down, and her scarlet is already beginning to dance around her fingers when Ultron tells her to start the mind games.

 

* * *

 

Making Thor fear is odd. She does not target fear, precisely, but she knows the lore, knows the stories of Ragnarok told by some of the HYDRA agents who had heard the stories of the Tesseract, and Johann Schmidt seeking through myths to find it. She knows that, for Norse Gods who live near enough forever, the death of all, the end of all, the loss of all, must be the most burning fear of all. Her scarlet dances easily, slips through his defences. She hears him deny any effect, but feels her tendrils still dancing. Her gifts were from the sceptre, after all, from his brother’s weapon.

She may be human, but her gifts? Her gifts can best him easily.

 

* * *

 

The Captain is harder. She feels Pietro’s vicious glee to knock him down, and her fingers dance willingly to trap him into fear before he rises. But...

She has never tried to make a stranger fear quite like this before. She knows this was the idea, if they were to be attacked, to twist fear into the minds of the attackers, but this is Captain America. He has battled through the better part of a century, even as he spent it asleep. She knows the records, that he lost friends, lost family, lost love. He has endured all the same. He tries to offer them an out, offer them safety, all the same. Wanda does not know what he might fear enough to halt him, and her scarlet glows with fierce uncertainty. _Loss_ , she decides. _He has lost much. Let us make a fear out of it_. Her scarlet dances, scarlet sings, and scarlet tendrils sink into the grey and fleshy matter of Steve Rogers’ American brain.

 

* * *

 

The Widow is easier. She has a past, and not all came out with the S.H.I.E.L.D. files. She sends scarlet to send the Widow stumbling back into her past, into what she ran from, and lets fear find its own way out.

 

* * *

 

Wanda has only time for one thought, when the archer turns and pushes an arrow toward her brow. _Pietro_.

The shock, the pain, last only moments but feel longer. She does not see her brother kick the archer through the glass, just knows it, and collapses willingly into the cradle of her brother’s arms when he wrenches the arrow from her brow. Pietro moves smoothly, if not slowly, and takes them clear of the fight, of the ship. The fresh air is a balm on Wanda’s burning brow, and Pietro’s hand on her shoulder is steadying.

“What can I do?”

“It hurts, it--,” Wanda’s eyes clench shut as she feels the stunted arms of her power. The tendrils she had been preparing to use to take the archer did not sink back into her, as all other times she has been disturbed. They dissipated, they are _gone_. She hears Pietro threaten the man, promise to return, and forces out a lie. “I’m alright.” Each breath is still a gulp but she speaks on, while she has her brother’s attention. “I want to finish the plan.”

Pietro follows her gaze even as her eyes turn scarlet, and he scoops her up, runs with her, without question.

 

* * *

 

 _What Wanda needs, what Wanda needs_. Pietro wants to kill the archer, kill him for laying a hand on Wanda, for hurting his twin, but he cannot. Not right now. Wanda asked for this, and so he carries her to the Avengers’ jet, and watches her make a monster out of a man.

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are much appreciated!


	12. Chapter 12

Wanda may have wrought nightmares, but she cannot evade her own. Hope misplaced, trust misplaced. The Baron is dead. The doctor, gone. Their vengeance has been cast aside for a new plan, a plan ruled by another’s will. Wanda’s nightmare is subtle in her mind, and strings together events that should have been warnings into a pure horror, a true nightmare. 

Wanda almost snaps the bridge, trying to keep it from her brother. Her hand combs through his hair as he sleeps, as she tries to calm.

 

* * *

 

When Wanda first sees the soft red dancing of the mind in the cradle she is almost glad. A read on the inscrutable robot is useful. They can read his humour; hear his plans, but this? This is different, this is new, and, Wanda knows, this is certain.

When she sees the blinding end that Ultron has planned she knows that it is his true intention. She knows that he is certain it must come to pass. She feels it being poured into an infant brain, a mind which doesn’t know yet what it is to have morals, and feels it shaped toward unknowing malice. The pain of it, of a mind warped to cruelty, of the end of the world, of Ultron’s twisting blinding wrath, is all too similar to the arrow pressed to her forehead only days before. 

Pietro’s mind is close to hers as he strokes her hair, holds her close, helps her stay stable.  _ What is it, what has happened, what did you see? _ The questions, quick and quiet. Wanda sends back only  _ Listen _ , and holds onto her brother’s hand.

Ultron’s justifications she already knows, but hearing them, more than anything, breaks any respect her brother had for the robot, and buys her time to send dancing scarlet to peel away the blinding blue from Doctor Cho. There is no time, no time to stay, but no time to leave, and Pietro takes only moments to go from pressing a kiss to her hair, to carrying her away, to safety. Even he would not try to face those robots alone, not after Ultron burns Doctor Cho.

 

* * *

 

The streets are in another language, but they are streets. The twins know streets. Wanda’s mind is turning, memories enacting mass after mass, trying and failing to absolve sin after sin. Wanda’s mind is scarlet, burgundy, red as blood, and she feels as though it will never wash out.

Pietro is beside her, hand in hers, tugging her round corners, down alleys, past shops. They walk a circuit, and Wanda feels the new-made mind, all innocent empty space, and Ultron’s burning anger, passing by one corner. Her hand spasms in her brother’s, and even the wave of love he sends down their bridge cannot draw her from her guilt.

 

* * *

 

When it comes on the news - that draws her from it. This is immediate, is not something that leaves her time to dwell on guilt, and Pietro scoops her up, runs her down streets, through alleys, trying to find where the Avengers battle Ultron. Her mind dances through all they pass, listening for images of particular things, directing relevant ones to Pietro as fast as he runs. This is instinct, with her scarlet, barely effort, more understanding, and Pietro sprints faster than sound, and takes them to the fight.

 

* * *

 

The train is chaos, but Wanda knows chaos. Silver barrels through and knocks Ultron off his feet, and scarlet dances and prevents him from walking on. And though he leaves something  _ new _ happens.

An enemy offers them trust.

Wanda feels her scarlet stretch, regrow what it lost from the archer’s weapon, and even as her brother runs ahead, budging and shoving people out of the train’s careening path, she feels as strong as if he were there. Forcing the train to stop is hard, yes, but she has done harder things. Her muscles lock, her arms feel as though she is pressing through something immovable, but she makes herself move, makes the train stop. Beyond the brink of her mind she can feel her brother’s, feel his frantic breathing, frantic heartbeat. 

For all he says he only needs a minute, it does not slow, even as they travel to the Avengers’ tower.

 

* * *

 

Wanda alights at the tower, and sees her own nightmare confirmed. Ultron will be given a new body. No matter her warnings to the Captain who trusts regardless of enmity. The dance of thought is clear, the Captain’s certain colours, Stark’s metal mind, Bruce Banner, the man with a monster living within his skin, has his mind warping green and purple as soon as he sees her.

_ Please do not, please do not, please do not _ .

Even as her brother kills the power, tries to kill the creature in the cradle, she knows her warnings will be disregarded. Voices rise, tempers blossom, and lightning comes crashing through the ceiling.

 

* * *

 

The creature which comes out of the cradle looks almost like a man. Its mind feels almost human. It has two legs, two arms, two eyes. Wanda is fairly certain if she made a count she would find five fingers and five toes on each hand and foot. The creature, robot, android, whatever it may be, has eyes and a nose and a mouth. Bar its bright colour it looks like a statue, made almost perfect.

But it has the stone in its brow, as bright a gold as the virus which gave the twins their powers, and Wanda does not know if trust is possible.

They all move, when the creature does, as Thor sends it hurtling toward the window, toward the city. It flies; they all reach for their weapons, and Wanda feels the moment as the creature’s mind crystallises into life and kindness. He is, Wanda realises, more than the sum of his parts, more than Ultron, more than Stark’s creation, more than a body from a cradle. He  _ is _ .

_ I think therefore I am _ , runs through the creature’s mind, bright gold on rich magenta-burgundy. A brief bubble of gold-green laughter. Wanda lets out a breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding, and tugs on the bridge to her brother.

 

* * *

 

They are given three minutes to prepare. Three minutes to find what they need, grab what they need, understand what they need. The creature - Vision - talks with Thor, both already certain of the path they mean to make. Wanda felt the shock in all the Avenger’s minds when the android had lifted the hammer, and feels unsettled. She draws closer to her brother, even as he prepares, and watches the creature, talking calmly, talking seriously, his mind a quiet, calm network of darting cells, each bright glow contained within itself. His mind is made of processors, nodule after processing nodule, each distinct, each with a job, working toward one cohesive whole. Wanda does not know what to make of it, and for once, her brother has to try to get her attention, rather than having it already.

 

* * *

 

As soon as they land Wanda sends out her scarlet. This time it does not dance. This time it processes, slowly, elegantly, certainly. This is precision, is certainty, is there to make order, and to make people safe. This cannot be an urgent order of fear, cannot be the chaos she knows. Wanda feels each mind her tendrils entrap into this dance of order, feels tens, feels hundreds, feels thousands, and drives them, with all her power, to safety.

But, for all her twisting scarlet, they fail.

 

* * *

 

The fight is hectic and terrible. Wanda does not know quite what to do, diving down streets and alleys, over the rocks of buildings. She had known what to do to make people evacuate, she had known what to do with her brother there to help, but the rock is flying, chaos abounds and she feels lost.

As she runs for shelter, feeling nothing but shock and guilt, and the tugging concern from Pietro’s mind, she spots a grimy head of pale hair resting on rubble, and has to stop herself from choking on a sob.

 

* * *

 

_ This is my fault. _ The thought rings through her mind, blinding and certain, and Wanda cannot breathe.

 

* * *

 

Hawkeye’s talk helps somewhat. It calms her, anchors her, reminds her that she may not have  _ fought _ fiercely before, not like this, but she has killed, and that her brother has done much worse in her defence, and for her sake. She picks herself up. She dusts herself off. And she summons her scarlet to her and steps outside to bring chaos on the bodies of the one who would threaten her and hers and her city.

It is like instinct, flooding through her, and she lets the scarlet dance as it pleases. Like when she first trained, this is not something that can be decided, it simply  _ is _ , like her bond to her brother. There is no taming it, no shaping it, she asks of it what she can, and she trusts need and necessity and desperation to guide it as it must. Body after robot body crumples in the face of her dancing scarlet, and her eyes shine like fireglow.

 

* * *

 

When they rejoin at the church Wanda knows Pietro does not quite understand how the scarlet now sings to her. She tries to show him, show him that the scarlet sings to her as his speed sings to him, but his concern sings stronger. She moves her hands, twists her fingers, and repeats her words. The robot that would have killed them crumples. Pietro looks in his sister’s eyes and understands that she does not need his protection now, not with the scarlet anger and rich red magic singing in her blood.

Like she killed the arsonists who destroyed their home, and killed the others in their flats, she will kill all of those who would destroy their only true home, if only they are so foolish as to come in range. The regret Pietro feels as he leaves, that vengeance would have driven his sister to this, is only superseded by the loss he feels at no longer being his sister’s protector.

 

* * *

 

She feels the fight around them. Ultron’s development of his alternate bodies has given them something akin to a nervous system and while she cannot read his mind through them, she can at least sense where they are with mingled telepathy and telekinesis. Her scarlet dances toward them and tears pieces off them, and her mind remains tied to her brother’s, watching when they come for her or for him. 

 

* * *

 

The pain she feels as he is torn from her is exquisite and terrible. She feels each bullet strike him, one after another in an unending barrage of pain, and then the cessation of impact, only followed by gasp, and gasp, and stuttered words and … nothing. Nothing at all. All the times she feared for her brother run through her head, each time, his expression, each time, he was fine, and now, far from her-- 

She screams. She can do nothing else. He was all she had, all she knew, all she cared about, and he is gone, gone,  _ gone _ . An unending vortex of terror grips her, takes her mind, her emotions, her magic, and rips apart all that is near her. She screams and screams and screams and sobs, and nothing is right in the world. 

There is nothing in her mind but burning fury when she leaves the church. Stark may have created this, started this, but he fights to end this. Her quarrel with him is gone as her brother is, but Ultron … 

Ultron remains. Ultron killed her brother. Wanda knows, in her heart of hearts, in her soul of souls, her mind of minds, in the core kernel of herself, that this will not bring him back. She does not care. She does not feel shrapnel hit her, bullets pass her, the air thinning. She does not hear comms, care as the city falls, but she feels a deep, abiding satisfaction as she tears the heart from Ultron. 

_ This _ , she thinks at him, for all he cannot hear her,  _ This is death. Do you like what you have wrought on this world? _

She curls in the wreck, and she does not expect - does not want - to live. 

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are much loved and welcomed!


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The aftermath.

**Epilogue**

It was Vision who found her. Vision who took her, Vision who lifted her clear of the falling rock, and took her to the carrier. Not the one holding her brother. She is grateful for that. She does not think she could have borne it.

The medics hover around her but the worst she has is scrapes. She refuses, firmly, to let go of Vision’s arm, and so the android stays beside her for several hours, until she sleeps. When she wakes he is gone, but he returns soon enough, and sits, peaceably, at her side. His mind is not her brother’s, nothing like it in fact, but it is wide and warm, and rich in ways she has never seen before. Even his mind first-forming was different from this, and she finds herself calmed by him, for all she first hated him. He does not leave her side, not until she leaves medical in their new facility, and asks him to.

She goes down to the morgue, and sits with Pietro.

 

* * *

 

It is a few days before the burial. The burial is at Natasha’s urging, and Wanda’s worries are assuaged as Vision helps her comb through her own mind, and piece together memories and grief into a way which makes sense. Wanda pulls on black clothes, silver jewellery, and wraps the blue scarf Pietro had used to wear when it was truly cold around her wrist.

The others had offered to come but she had refused their company. She would accept Vision, she would accept Hawkeye, she would accept Natasha, but the others were not welcome, not when the time came to put her brother into the ground.

The grave is outside the new building they were constructing. Wanda had asked for it, asked that, if she was training to help them, would they at least help her grieve in peace, and be near to her brother still. It is outside, on the one patch of green lawn not covered by the grey gates and piles of concrete and steel. Wanda’s hands are empty, for she brought no flowers. No lilies of sorrow, or wormwood of bitterness were sufficient to explain her grief, so her fingers curled on empty air where instead her brother’s hand should have been. She eyes the coffin.

She had asked that it be shut. His body was fine, clean, washed, made new and almost to life, but Wanda couldn’t bear that lie, couldn’t stop herself reaching for the bridge to his mind when she saw his face like that, and it made the grief so much worse. She’d used the strongest eyeliner she owned that morning, in the hope it wouldn’t smear or smudge when she inevitably cried. Her brother was _gone_.

They had, both of them, always thought she might die first. She was fiercer than her brother sometimes, and certainly at least as smart if not more so. But he had been faster and stronger, and they had thought that that might have saved him, where the lack would not save Wanda. But their powers had changed them and even speed was not magic. Pietro was _gone_ and she couldn’t change it even if she poured all her power into it.

The grief rubs raw as sandpaper on skin.

Natasha is in white and black, both. Black is her usual gear, her work gear, and she had asked Wanda if she might wear something other than the colour. Vision has made his suit anew, something like an Asgardian formal tunic that Thor had shown him, colour almost navy, gold chasing at the hems. Clint is in black, a suit, and looks the most funereal of them all. In one hand Natasha holds a white orchid, but no one else has flowers. The Widow sets it smoothly atop the dark wood of the coffin, and they all watch it descend into the ground.

They have no need for words at all. Wanda knows her grief had no words, and Natasha seems to understand. Hawkeye may not, but he stands in silence nonetheless, and Vision simply _stands_ , silent and tall behind and slightly to the left of Wanda. Wanda does not think she could have stood it if he had presumed to stand at her right, where her brother had always been, but he seems to know already. The space there is deadspace, is empty for a reason, and she leans towards it instinctively. Vision stands at her other shoulder, ready to pull her back from the abyss.

Wanda’s hands rise, and twist. Her fingers move and scarlet dances, and the dirt on the plastic is lifted, spinning in a field of red. Her hands and magic shift it and move it, and it is become a pillar, each loose piece separated out into a fine film, rising higher and higher and higher into the sky.

It is with a relaxing finality her hands gently fall, and lets the soil follow. It falls lightly, in a soft shower, scattering evenly. With a curl of Wanda’s left ring finger and right little finger, the soil curls around the orchid Natasha gave to the grave. It shines bright white against the dark loam, before the soil covers it too. The falling of the soil is slow, and lovely, and it calms Wanda to do. She remembers what she had told her brother, told _Pietro_ , that day they first killed someone.

_We kill them, we bury them. Then we go on._

Ultron had killed her brother. They would bury her brother. And, at last, she would move on. She knew she had no option but.

As the last of the soil fell she summoned up the rolls of sod, unrolling the turf in neat lines. Lastly, she pulled up the stone, and pushed it into place, twisting earth around to and into it, locking the gravestone as firmly into place as possible. Her brother was buried, and she knew, as she stepped back from the grave, that she had to begin to move on.

**Finis**

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's this fic completed! I probably will take the weekend as a break, and start posting the next part of the series come Monday, so feel free to leave comments on the fic if there's something you hope to see in the series, or just something you want to say! Remember, comments are much loved and much appreciated!


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